


softly killing me (i can feel it in my bones)

by markleegalaxies



Category: NCT (Band), WayV (Band)
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe - Criminals, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Antihero WayV, Blood and Violence, Crimes & Criminals, Family Dynamics, Found Family, Getting Together, Gun Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Missions Gone Wrong, Past Homelessness, Team as Family, Violence, Xiao De Jun | Xiao Jun & Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas are Best Friends, hendery & xiaojun are dating without 'dating' yktv, minor character injury, sassy xiaojun, wayv antiheroes sexc lol
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 13:01:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29825328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/markleegalaxies/pseuds/markleegalaxies
Summary: When Sicheng has to sit the next group mission out because of an injury, Dejun is more than willing to take his place. Cue a worried Guanheng, untimely team bonding, and repressed sentimental feelings.Oh, and of course, the mission doesn't go as planned.
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Qian Kun, Wong Kun Hang | Hendery/Xiao De Jun | Xiao Jun
Comments: 14
Kudos: 58





	1. fickle frequency

“No. Absolutely not, _no_.”

“It’s not your decision to make,” Kun says back calmly, an eyebrow raised as he looks at Guanheng. He doesn’t look for long though, as he turns to Dejun right after. “It’s Dejun’s decision.”

Said man is sitting on his desk chair, looking up at the other two standing men with his owlish eyes. From here, Guanheng looks like he’s ready to pop a blood vessel. He’s not too sure why, until Kun continues and says,

“It’s within enemy boundaries,” he adds on casually, and out of the corner of his eye, Dejun can see Guanheng get redder and redder by the second. “Two hours from here. There’s that ice cream place you like along the way.”

“Ice cream?” Dejun perks up immediately at the mention, because even if it was April, it didn’t matter: ice cream was his _favourite_. 

“Ice cream? You’re going to bribe him with _ice cream_?” Guanheng asks exasperatedly, arms crossed over his chest and resuming a stance which usually either Kun or Ten find themselves in. 

“It’s not bribing,” Kun says innocently, holding up three fingers up to Guanheng’s face. “I’m giving him the lay down. Explaining the mission.”

“Are you going to mention that it’s a suicide mission?” 

The little lightness which had managed to seep into their conversation is immediately replaced by an uncomfortably long stretch of silence. 

Guanheng isn’t wrong, and it seems like Kun knows that as well, and doesn’t know how to refute it. 

But in all fairness, Dejun knows that too. He knew how everything would be like the second he grabbed Ten’s hand and accepted to be a part of this life all those years ago. And it was _worth it_ , Dejun would never think or feel otherwise. 

He had met his best friends here—his _family_ here. Even if they live out dangerous missions which really shouldn’t be as normalized as they are for them, he wouldn’t trade it. It’s a million times better than what he would’ve had if he never met Ten. 

And he met Guanheng here too. 

That’s probably the biggest plus of them all. 

“It is,” Kun finally concedes, and he turns back to Dejun. He’s still sitting on his chair, and the only reminder that Ten is actually here too is the clicking noises coming from his keyboard. “But—it wouldn’t be your first time.”

That’s true: it _wouldn’t_ be his first time. But it would be his first time in a while, and it seems like Guanheng knows that too, because he whips his head to look at Kun faster than the speed of light. 

Dejun hopes his neck is okay.

“It might as well be! He hasn’t been out on the field in _months_ —it’s almost been two years! And to start again on _this_ mission? Are you insane?”

Dejun can appreciate Guanheng’s concern, he truly can, but there comes a time where Guanheng’s enthusiasm gets the better of him. Now being one of those times. 

“I don’t appreciate you talking about me as if I’m rusty,” he pipes up for the first time, finally getting up from his chair and matching Kun and Guanheng’s eyes—they were all rather short. “Or talking about me as if I’m not in the room.”

“I don’t mean it like that,” Guanheng immediately explains, crossing his hands together in front of his chest to show he means it. Dejun has learned by this point that Guanheng is very action oriented. And his actions actually do actually speak louder than a thousand words. “I just care about you. I don’t want you out there, in—in danger, Dejun.”

Dejun hums, and he finds it a little amusing. 

“I care about you too,” he tells Guanheng, and promptly ignores Ten gagging at the statement. He puts a comforting hand on Guanheng’s arm, sliding down until he’s holding the crook of his elbow. “But I send you out onto the field at least once a month without saying you’re incapable of it.”

Dejun smiles, and Guanheng blanches. 

“I-I don’t think you’re incapable,” Guanheng stutters, and now his eyes are even wider than Dejun’s precious, owlish ones. “You’re _more_ than capable. I know that. You know that. Everyone knows that.” Guanheng is rambling. 

Guanheng only rambles whenever he’s trying to save himself. Dejun thinks it’s cute. 

“Thanks babe,” Dejun smiles sweetly, taking pride in the way Guanheng’s cheeks flush, and then in the way he sees Kun roll his eyes out of his peripheral vision. Speaking of Kun, he turns around to face him. “I’ll go. When is it?”

“Two weeks,” Kun answers easily, and then casts Ten a quick look. Without even turning around, Ten seems to be able to know what Kun wants, and Dejun guesses it comes with them being so attuned with each other. 

“You’re gonna be outnumbered,” he supplies, just another fact which makes Guanheng make a distressed sound in the back of his throat. “Four to… An indefinite number of security guards. But don’t worry, they’re probably incompetent.”

“ _Indefinite_?” Guanheng repeats, seeming to take it in a more stressful manner than Dejun does. “Then why isn’t everyone coming along too?”

Ten doesn’t often go on missions. If he did, it was when they were in small spaces and needed to be in and out fast. When it came to substituting, they sent in Dejun. But that hasn’t had to happen in almost, like Guanheng had said, two years. Kun also doesn’t go often, but he’s a terrific sniper and tends to carry out small solo tasks. Rarely do they ever need a sniper on a team mission, but when they do, Kun is always there. 

“And then what? Have only Sicheng in your ears? Sicheng isn’t as familiar with the equipment, he’ll barely be able to handle one person,” Kun explains. 

“Don’t undermine him,” Dejun quips, sitting back down on his desk chair and swiveling around to face his computer screen. “Ten, send the address here?” 

Ten does so without another word, and Dejun’s fingers are quick to plug in the address and start looking for the basic logistics. 

“I’m not undermining him. I'm just not too sure how well he’ll fare alert in front of a computer when he’ll be doped up on morphine,” Kun shrugs, and Dejun shudders. He _hates_ drugs, but it was the only stimulant powerful enough to stave Sicheng off at home, after he had gone and nearly broken half of his ribs and gotten shot in the side and the upper leg. 

Couldn't he have done that _after_ this mission? Maybe then, Dejun wouldn’t have to deal with Guanheng’s constant whining. 

Anyways, that wasn’t the point. No, the point was that the location of the next mission was,

“A fucking Costco warehouse? _A Costco warehouse_?” 

Kun looks at Dejun like nothing is wrong. Guanheng looks like the prospect of carrying out the next mission in a Costco warehouse is the most terrifying thing in the world. And Ten is snickering from where he’s still facing his own computer. 

“What the hell is in a Costco warehouse?” Dejun asks, patience running thin as Ten just continues to laugh at him. 

“Say Costco warehouse one more time and see what I fucking do about it,” Yangyang hisses, walking into the room with a staggering Sicheng practically using him as a pair of legs. Xuxi follows behind them. “Are you in or not? Because if you’re not, let me know, I’ll have to cover two areas.” 

“I said I’ll go,” Dejun mutters, swiveling back towards his computer screen as Guanheng makes yet another stressed sound. Maybe they’ll have to talk about that. “What are we even doing there?”

“Isn’t it normally your job to find out?” Sicheng asks with a raised eyebrow, wincing slightly as he shifts into a more comfortable position. Dejun would feel a sense of pity if Sicheng wasn’t showing him attitude. 

“I found out about this mission fifteen minutes ago,” he reasons. Kun is looking over Ten’s shoulder to see something on his screen, and then turns back to Dejun. 

“There’s a hard drive in the security room,” he recites, just as Ten finally turns around and faces the rest of the group. He has one of their cats, Louis, in his lap. Huh, Dejun hadn’t even noticed. “Yangyang and Hendery can take on damage control. You and Xuxi can just head right for the security room.”

“So we’re bait,” Yangyang deadpans, the same time that Xuxi shrugs, sending Kun a hand sign which tells him he’s okay with the plan. Then again, Xuxi is the most easygoing one out of all of them. “And you’re sending Xuxi and Dejun into a war zone?”

“It’s not a _war zone,_ baby,” Ten tsks amusedly, pulling up something on his computer while moving his cursor around to show Yangyang. “It’ll be 2:00 am, less security, and half of them will probably be asleep. It’s a fucking Costco warehouse, idiots ptobably think people won’t look there,” he snorts, pulling up a rough floorplan of the warehouse. Dejun wants to know how he got one. 

“The first floor has the most security, so stealth will be important at first,” Kun continues, looking specifically at Dejun, Guanheng, Yangyang, and Xuxi. “The security room is on the fourth floor, and there’s a staircase which takes you right up. There’s probably less security there, however, Heng and Yang are gonna have to be tailing you from behind.”

“One in the front, one in the back,” Dejun supplies, getting up from his seat to take a closer look at the floorplan. “Babe, you should stay twenty feet in front of us at all times to make sure we’re in the clear. Yangyang, twenty feet behind us to make sure no one’s coming.”

“What, no ‘babe’ for me?” Yangyang pouts, and Dejun laughs humorlessly. “But sure, that’s cool. I still think that it’s a warzone though.”

“Then you better load your bullets,” Sicheng says, unbothered like he is majority of the time. Sometimes, he gets emotional. Most of the time, he only gets emotional because Yangyang bosses him around. “And keep your damn earpiece in this time.”

“It fell out _one time_!” he argues, and then gets thrown into a petty argument with Sicheng. It happens too frequently for Dejun to be bothered paying attention to it, so he instead checks the time on the clock. 

“Hey,” he says quietly to Guanheng, who’s already been staring at him. He seems to snap out of his thoughts when he’s called on though, and Dejun thinks the way he shakes his head side to side to become more alert is cute. “Dinner? I’m starving and have been craving dumplings.”

“Fried dumplings?” Guanheng asks with a ghost of a smile on his lips, and Dejun nods eagerly. Even the mention is making his stomach growl. “What, without them?” he adds, throwing a short glance over to where Yangyang and Sicheng are still arguing, and Xuxi, Kun, and Ten are discussing something in front of the latter’s computer. 

“Why, you don’t wanna take me up on offering alone time together?” Dejun raises an eyebrow, and he sees Guanheng’s eyes widen the same time the apples of his cheek get dusted a bit pink. 

“Sounds too good to pass on when you say it like that,” Guanheng grins, reaching around Dejun and turning off his computer for him. “Let’s go before someone notices.”

And so they do, slipping out of the door before anyone can turn their attention to them, and when Guanheng’s hand goes to grab his jacket from where it’s tossed along the back of the couch, he feels Dejun’s hand slip into his. 

“Well aren’t you sneaky,” Guanheng comments, adjusting his grip on Dejun’s hand until their fingers are laced together comfortably. He slips into his shoes the same time Dejun does, and mindlessly feels around the pocket of his jacket to make sure he has his wallet. He knows Dejun has his wallet with him twenty-four-seven, but he doesn’t know how many more times he can handle Dejun paying for his meals. 

“We’ve been taught to be sneaky,” Dejun deadpans, pushing his gold framed wire glasses up the bridge of his nose. At the same time, Guanheng notices how his white fringe falls into his eyes. Before Dejun can brush them away himself, Guanheng’s fingers gently move them aside. Dejun looks unimpressed. “And you still haven’t learned.”

Guanheng has the decency to blush, because while he has very much learned how to be sneaky on the field, _where it counts_ , Dejun is right when it comes to being sneaky with him. Between them, he’s yet to learn the art of subtlety when Dejun constantly demands all of his attention. 

“Didn’t you say you were starving? Stop talking, it works up an appetite,” Guanheng says, and while he’s not sure if it’s true or just something Ten says to Yangyang so often that it’s been ingrained into his brain as a fact, Dejun still listens as they step out of their apartment together. 

It’s already well past midnight, the sky pitch black but the city wide awake. The street lamps illuminate the roads along with the help of food carts and kids on their motorcycles, fooling around while their parents are asleep. 

It’s a little chilly, April having almost passed, but Dejun’s hand in his own is a warm reminder, as well as the jacket hugging his frame. 

Blending in at night isn’t a problem, but the closer they get to the street which is only a block away from all the nightclubs (a convenient location for those who stay up well past what is scientifically deemed healthy), the more people there are walking around. Granted, half of them, if not most of them, are intoxicated and don’t spare them another glance. 

The others… Well, Guanheng just doesn’t want any funny looks. And when Guanheng and Dejun are the people they are, funny looks are too much of a normalized occurrence. Guanheng often finds himself telling Dejun it’s because he’s so pretty that people can’t help but stare, but Dejun always turns right back around and says Guanheng was so ugly that people can’t help but stare. 

Guanheng knows it’s deflection more than anything anyways… Dejun wouldn’t kiss him goodnight if he truly thought he was ugly.

Which leaves Guanheng with the last, and most probable reason… 

“I’ll never get used to being a vigilante,” Dejun sighs, swinging their joint hands between them. He’s become ignorant of the way people stare, but Guanheng knows that if this was even three years ago, it wouldn’t have been the case. 

“They don’t think you’re a vigilante, babe.” Guanheng scrunches his nose. “They think you’re a convicted felon who got bailed out and has been evading the law since then.”

“I was thirteen!” Dejun argues, and it wouldn't be the first time. Which is why Guanheng knows what he’s going to say even before he says it, “And so was Xuxi! Heck, you were twelve!”

“And Kun was a very nice man who bailed us out because his father has ties in the system,” he supplies, pulling Dejun a little closer to his side once they start walking into an area which was truly too populated at the early hour of 01:47 am. “Long story short, I’d hate us too if I were boring and miserable.”

“I can’t believe petty theft turned me into public enemy number one,” Dejun sulks, and Guanheng doesn’t have to be looking at him to know his lower lip is jutted out. Dejun’s quirks are encrypted into his brain at this point. 

“You’re not public enemy number one, although I know you’d like the attention.” Rightfully, Dejun elbows him in the ribs, but the conversation is quickly forgotten when he spots the food cart he was looking for. 

“Come, come, come, I’m salivating right now,” Dejun says excitedly, pulling on Guanheng’s hand and leading them both towards the familiar food cart with an equally as familiar auntie who greets them with a smile. 

While Dejun, Xuxi, and Guanheng himself had been shunned by the majority of society at different respective times, there are still some people who look past their prepubescent shenanigans and offer them much needed discounts on dinner. 

This auntie is one of them.

“I’ll order, you grab a bench,” Guanheng tells Dejun, who furrows his eyebrows confusedly once more and pats his own pocket.

“But it’s my treat,” he reasons, and it makes Guanheng smile. Nonetheless, the younger shakes his head and nudges Dejun in the direction of the benches which are fairly unoccupied. “I’m the one who asked you to eat.”

“And I’m the one whose meals you’ve been paying for this past week,” he argues, raising a challenging eyebrow. Dejun doesn’t take him up on that challenge, shoulders sagging as he relents, and presses a short peck to Guanheng’s cheek before heading off towards the benches.

Guanheng makes amicable enough conversation with the auntie while he orders their dumplings, and then some soup because he doesn’t need Dejun to tell him he’d like some soup to know the chilly air has already wormed its way into his system. He also peeks over his shoulder every minute to make sure Dejun is still faring off well, for no reason other than knowing how much Dejun dislikes meeting strangers. 

Quite difficult to work around when you’re in their field of work, but that’s also why Dejun stays behind his computer screen more often than not. Other times, he has guns tucked into his waistband and knives up his pant legs and sleeves, so Guanheng can see why it’s not too much of a problem out on missions. 

He makes his way back to Dejun in under ten minutes, pleasantly endeared by the sight of the older boy’s red cheeks and pink nose. Perhaps it was chillier than Guanheng had initially thought. 

“Let’s warm you up,” Guanheng says amusedly, taking a seat next to Dejun and handing him his serving. 

Immediately, the two start digging in, and the warmth spreads through their system instantly. Soup seemed to have been a good call, as Dejun makes sounds of contentment while he eats. And the dumplings were _definitely_ the right call, but then again, almost everything Dejun suggests is the right call. 

“Should we makeout?” Dejun asks out of nowhere, successfully having Guanheng choke on the food he had in his mouth. “There’s a group of kids who keep staring at you like they’re going to eat you.”

“Should I show them my face?” he asks once he’s dislodged the food from his throat. His eyes water, but it goes away relatively quickly since the cold air makes them all shrink away. “Maybe they’ll scrunch their faces in disgust like all the middle aged women I walk by once they see I’m an ex-convict.”

“Don’t show them your face!” Dejun immediately denies, distaste almost tangible in his tone. “They’re just going to like you more.”

“Now, now, don’t get so possessive,” Guanheng snorts, an unattractive sound which does nothing but make Dejun find him cuter. 

“Who said I was possessive?” Dejun spits, shovelling the last dumpling into his mouth and pointedly ignoring Guanheng’s eyes. Guanheng thinks it’s an adorable nervous habit Dejun thinks he isn’t aware of. “Just finish your food so that we can leave.”

Dejun doesn’t look his way again, so he doesn’t see the fond smile on his face as Guanheng finishes the last of his soup. He listens to Dejun as he collects all of his trash, and then follows with his own as they get up to throw it away. 

Immediately after their hands are empty, Dejun is quick to hold his hand again, and Guanheng has half the mind to turn around and see if the group of kids are still staring. He doesn’t though, just because he knows Dejun wouldn’t appreciate the teasing. 

They take their time walking in comfortable silence back to the apartment, but neither of them are in a rush. Instead, Guanheng thinks they’re both purposefully walking a bit slower, knowing that once they’re back home, alone time won’t come by them as easily.

“Look,” Guanheng points out after a few more minutes go by. He brings them to a stop, and uses his free hand to point to the sky a distance away. “That’s a star.”

“I’m ninety percent sure that’s an airplane,” Dejun says back, tearing his eyes from the sky before Guanheng can somehow convince him it’s _not_ an airplane. He could be speaking about bullshit and there’ll always be someone who will believe him; Guanheng has a way with words like that. 

“You’re just pessimistic,” Guanheng tsks, but he lets it go. 

Dejun _isn’t_ actually pessimistic, he’s just been friends with Sicheng longer than he’s been friends with Guanheng. He’s picked up on more than a few things from the older boy, and one of those things is how realistic he is. Sicheng is a no bullshit type of person, and it’s very obvious that some of that has rubbed off onto Dejun. 

They both continue to walk, and Guanheng notices Dejun shiver. He’s wearing only a denim jacket on top of his white hoodie, and while he looks terribly adorable swimming in all that fabric, Dejun is clearly not warm enough. 

“Hey, we should pick up the pace if you’re getting cold,” he suggests, but all Dejun does is shake his head. 

“I like being with you,” Dejun mumbles, and it’s so low that Guanheng can’t make out what he said. 

“What?” he asks for clarification, and maybe if it was brighter outside, he’d be able to see the way Dejun’s cheeks dust themselves red. But then again, he may just pass it off for the wind biting his cheeks if he did see it. 

“I said I like being alone with you,” Dejun repeats, louder this time but still not looking at Guanheng directly. 

To him, that’s no big deal though.

All it takes is for Guanheng to stop walking, let Dejun feel the tug of resistance, and turn around with a furrow between his eyebrows before he’s getting pulled right up flush against Guanheng. 

“I like being alone with you too,” Guanheng says quietly, the words soft as they travel between the short distance between their faces. Up close, he still can’t see the way Dejun flushes. But he can definitely feel the heat radiating off of his face, and knowing it’s there is enough. “But you’re shaking like a leaf. You should’ve worn a warmer coat,” he scolds gently. 

Guanheng isn’t sure if his words are even getting processed by Dejun, because once the initial shock wears off of him, he’s walking Guanheng back until he meets the brick wall of a building behind him. He’s glad it’s dark right now—he’s sure not too many dwellers would appreciate looking out the window to see him getting pinned to the wall. 

“Because I have you to keep me warm,” Dejun says, equally as quietly, except this time it’s with their lips practically brushing against each other. Guanheng has half the mind to bridge the small gap between them, but Dejun keeps speaking before he can. “And I didn’t think it’d be this cold outside.”

Guanheng huffs out a laugh, hot air hitting Dejun right in the face. He’s not deterred by it though, and if whatever Guanheng can make out in the darkness of the alleyway they’re in, the corner of Dejun’s lips simply quirks up. 

“Quite the sweet talker,” Guanheng comments, if only to have Dejun press him closer to the wall behind him. The coldness of the bricks seep through his jacket and into his bones, but it’s a bit welcome—he’s having trouble _not_ feeling hot with Dejun this close to him. “How romantic of you.”

“Mm, I’ve had some practice,” the older boy mutters, and in a trick of the moonlight, Guanheng sees Dejun’s eyes flick down to his lips. 

He’s kissed those lips hundreds of times—but they still look irresistible.

Tempting. 

Inviting. 

“Dejun, are you still cold?” 

Guanheng is now focused on Dejun’s lips, and can see the shadow of them grinning. 

“Very, very cold, babe.”

  
  
  


»«

  
  
  


When Guanheng walks into the apartment two days later after a grocery run with Xuxi, the first thing that greets them both is Yangyang being thrown against their living room wall. 

“Hey, hey, hey!” Xuxi immediately calls, always taking the part of the mediator. He may be their team’s muscle, who really doesn’t think twice before going to town, but he still would rather solve all their problems with words first. Guanheng thinks it’s admirable. “Cut that out, the fuck. Why are you guys fighting each other?”

Xuxi seems to have seen something Guanheng hadn’t if he’s able to see who had thrown Yangyang against the wall, so Guanheng takes that as his cue to walk deeper into the apartment. 

The first thing he sees after he sees Xuxi help Yangyang onto his feet is a breathless Dejun, sweaty, and looking as battered as Yangyang. 

“What are you two doing?” Guanheng asks, sounding as concerned as Xuxi as he walks over to Dejun, who’s panting and lifting his shirt up to use the hem to wipe sweat off of his face. “Beware of the kitchen table by the way, Kun will be on your asses about that if you break it.”

“Fuck the kitchen table,” Xuxi says eloquently, looking between Dejun and Yangyang like a distressed mother. Guanheng can’t help but think the role kind of suits him. “Why do you two look like you’ve been beating each other up to a pulp?”

“Because we have,” Yangyang answers easily, shrugging right after. Out of the corner of his eye, Guanheng sees Dejun do the same. “You’ve still got it in you.”

“I don’t appreciate the surprise,” Dejun says while catching his breath, one bushy eyebrow raised and arched. “Where would it all go?” 

Like Dejun had expected, Yangyang doesn’t have an answer to that. Thankfully though, Xuxi seemed to have pieced things together. 

“Ah, I see… You’re sparring, aren’t you?” he asks, earning a curt nod from Dejun. “To practice for the mission… Hey, we should up your weight during training if you’re preparing!” he adds enthusiastically, to which Dejun only groans. 

Guanheng isn’t too sure when it started, but Dejun and Xuxi have become their resident gym rats (and each other’s workout buddies) since the past few years. Occasionally, Sicheng and Kun will join them, but it’s Dejun and Xuxi who never stray from their routine. 

At the end of the day, Guanheng simply finds it admirable, like he does a lot of things about Xuxi, he’s come to realize as of late. 

“Well, take a break for now,” he says, throwing a look at Yangyang from over his shoulder. The latter is rubbing at his hip, and Guanheng winces when he imagines the extent of what they did to each other. Couldn't they have at least worn padding? “And you—” he starts, back to facing Dejun, with his hands on his hips like how he’s seen old ladies on the street scold teenagers. “I’m bringing you some ice, your face is already turning purple.” 

“Yangyang!” Dejun gasps, sounding scandalized. “Why’d you make my face purple!”

“Dude, you almost broke my fingers!” Yangyang counters, and Guanheng feels a headache coming on.

“Key word, _almost_ ,”

“Do you want to see what you’ve done to my ribs?” Yangyang hisses, and Guanheng is stepping between the two of them before Dejun decides he wants to throw Yangyang against the wall again.

“That’s enough,” Xuxi sighs, tugging Yangyang back and pressing his own bag of frozen peas against the younger’s ribs. “You two are ridiculous. Acting like children when you’ve known each other for seven years.”

“Worst seven years of my life,” Dejun huffs childishly, no heat in his words. Guanheng can’t help but smile gently at his behaviour, and then some when he winces as the ice cubes Guanheng had wrapped in a tea towel make contact with his cheekbone. “Fuck, not my cheekbones,” he whines, and Guanheng finds himself whining internally as well.

He loves Dejun’s cheekbones. They were perfect to kiss and perfect to nibble on when he wanted to irritate the older boy. 

“Do you want me to kiss it better?” Guanheng asks, teasing in all aspects. So he doesn’t expect it when Dejun just pulls the corner of his lips down, widens his eyes and smacks a puppy dog expression onto his face. 

“Will you?” he asks sweetly, equally as playful. He lowers the tea towel of ice just a bit, until his bruised cheekbone is visible. It _is_ purple now that Guanheng looks at it, and the protective part of him wants to smack Yangyang upside down on the head. But the rational part of him wins over, so he leans in to press a warm and gentle peck onto Dejun’s cheek. 

“Can you two _not_ ,” Yangyang groans, proceeding to gag in their direction. 

Guanheng thinks it serves him right when he winces and stands up straighter, his ribs no doubt taking the brute end of his gagging. 

“What did you even do to him?” Guanheng asks as he watches Yangyang slump into the couch, looking defeated. “And why didn’t you two use padding?” 

“Dejun’s the one who sneaked up on me!” 

“You’re the one who wanted me to brush up on my skills! Serves you right for thinking they even went anywhere in the first place,” Dejun huffs, indignant in the way he crosses his arms over his chest and doesn’t look at Yangyang. 

Guanheng feels just a little like a fool for holding the tea towel of ice up to Dejun’s cheek, as if the latter couldn’t do it himself. But he guesses it’s fitting… Maybe he is just a fool for Dejun at the end of the day. 

“Next time, put me in my place with your words instead of your fists please,” the younger scoffs, and it makes Dejun glare at him once more before finally ending the conversation by looking at Guanheng. 

“Do you need anything else? More ice? Water?” Guanheng asks, and he sees Dejun smile instead of answering. 

“I’m more than fine,” Dejun assures, taking a seat at the kitchen table, a safe distance away from Yangyang so that they couldn’t continue provoking each other. “But did you buy broccoli? I was going to make a meal plan for the next week.”

“Mhm, Xuxi stocked up on vegetables and meat. I also bought those sour candies you like,” Guanheng smiles, satisfied when he sees the way Dejun’s eyes light up. “I’m surprised Kun even let us handle it for this week.”

“Well, he’s busy teaching Sicheng how to use a computer,” Dejun snorts. “While he’s high on morphine…”

“Do you trust Sicheng to lead you through the mission?” Yangyang asks, looking between the three of them. “Not that he’s not capable—he’s an ace, but he’ll be… High.” he finishes with a shrug, and Guanheng scoffs. 

“You guys don’t need to worry,” he says. “Kun told me Sicheng is in charge of me. Better hope he doesn’t fucking knock out on me.”

“ _You_ don’t need to worry,” Xuxi repeats, this time directed at Guanheng. “At this point, you can take a mission on your own.”

“Flattery gets you nowhere,” Guanheng grumbles, but he can’t even hide the way the corner of his lips quirk up. “But it’s still quite appreciated.” 

“Guanheng can’t take a mission on his own,” Dejun denies, and just when Guanheng is about to get fired up about why _Dejun_ of all people thinks that way, the older boy continues. “He never shoots his gun.”

Well, that’s something Guanheng can’t really dispute… He hates shooting his gun, unlike everyone else. It seems like he’s the only one who’s iffy about it, what with Kun being a skillful sniper and Sicheng occasionally taking Yangyang and Xuxi out to shooting ranges. 

He’d just rather not injure someone that way. He always prefers to use the tranquilizers they keep on them for missions which require more stealth, and leaves the gruesome part for someone else. More often than not, it’s Xuxi who shoots the bullet, and Guanheng always looks away. Sicheng and Yangyang like watching. 

Dejun had initially thought he’d get used to it eventually, or grow out of his apprehension. But it’s been almost four years, and he’s still the same. He’s glad it doesn’t actually bother anyone, Yangyang and Sicheng are also scarily always more than willing to put a bullet through someone’s skull, but it has become a downfall in some circumstances. 

Anyway, that wasn’t the point of the discussion. 

“I can just put them to sleep,” he sniffs in response, earning a snort from Xuxi. “I’m not _coldhearted_.”

“Hey, Xuxi isn’t coldhearted,” Yangyang defends, pointing to how he was holding the bag of frozen peas to Yangyang’s ribs so that the latter can use his hands to play a mobile game instead. “He raises Bella like an actual kid.”

“Because she _is_ my actual kid,” Xuxi says matter-of-factly, not one ounce of sarcasm in his tone. “She’s just like me,” he adds proudly, and it earns him an eye roll from Dejun, Bella’s other resident parental unit. 

“Yeah, every time she pisses on the floor, it reminds me that she’s just like her father,” he deadpans, effectively wiping the smile off of Xuxi’s face. 

“You know, it’s not like you’re that much better either,” Xuxi fires back, sitting up straighter while still keeping his hand stable holding Yangyang’s peas. “She’s only so rebellious because you’re so lenient on her. You have no backbone Jun!”

“I’m sorry I _love_ her?” Dejun says incredulously, the look on his face equally as incredulous as he too sits up straighter. “And who is it who cleans after her everyday? I don’t see _you_ changing the pee pads and taking her out on walks.”

“I can’t just walk around the streets in broad daylight—I’m an ex-convict, Dejun!”

“I’m a _felon_ , Xuxi!”

“Ex-felon,” Guanheng corrects, but obviously, his words fall deaf to them. 

“Are you two arguing over who’s the worst criminal?” Kun asks as he walks into the living room, a half conscious Sicheng draped over him. “Again?”

He doesn’t even wait for an answer before helping Sicheng down onto the couch next to Yangyang, who scooches over to make the slightest bit of space. He’s too engrossed in his game to do anything else. 

“I thought we agreed that we’re all just a group of terrible people,” Sicheng mumbles, and it makes Yangyang snort from where he’s half listening. 

“That’s the most blunt way to put it,” Guanheng tsks, cocking his head to the side and adjusting the ice on Dejun’s cheek. He’s going to have to replace it soon, it’s almost all melted. “Dejun is more eloquent about it and calls us vigilantes.”

“ _Vigilantes_ ,” Kun laughs, throwing his head back because he apparently finds it that funny. Guanheng doesn’t get it, but he doubts any of them do. No one shares Kun’s humour, except sometimes Ten. But Ten will never admit that. “You’re being too nice—we’re corrupt, Dejun baby, no need to sugarcoat it.”

“I try very hard to bring some normalcy into your miserable lives, the least you can do is acknowledge it,” Dejun huffs, sinking back into the cushions and letting Guanheng adjust the tea towel. It feels more like a cold, damp cloth than ice at this point. 

“Life is _not_ miserable,” Xuxi huffs, getting up from his seat and finally making Yangyang hold his own peas. “You are.”

“Haha,” Dejun deadpans, flinching just slightly when he feels Guanheng’s fingers on his cheek. He hadn’t even noticed when the ice had left; his cheek is pretty numb at this point.

“It’s not swelling,” Guanheng mumbles, opening up the tea towel and noting how all the ice had been soaked into the fabric. “But it is still very purple.”

“I’m gonna kill Yangyang,” Dejun grumbles, but he makes no move to get up and do something about it. 

“It’s okay, you still look handsome,” the other smiles, his thumb gentle as it drags down the sore skin on his cheek. Maybe Guanheng was sick in the head, but he finds that Dejun doesn’t look terrible with purple blooming along his skin… But that was a thought for another time. 

“Flattery doesn’t get you anywhere,” Dejun repeats Guanheng’s words from earlier, but he is unable to meet the other’s eyes. Guanheng knows that when that happens, he’s succeeded in flustering him. And that was a win in his books anyday. 

“Do you want more ice?” he asks instead, steering the conversation onto another topic, just for Dejun’s sake. He had already taken a beating, Guanheng won’t add insult to injury—at least, not now. Maybe after dinner. 

“That would be appreciated, sure,” he hums, pulling his legs up to rest his chin on them. He looks small like this, but Guanheng knows better; Dejun is just tired. “Thank you, babe.”

“No problem,” he smiles, getting up from the couch and heading into the kitchen. Kun is there, doing something with vegetables and a cutting board. Out of the corner of his eye, Guanheng can see that there’s a bowl of prawns in the sink. “What are you making?”

“Dinner,” Kun answers simply, turning the tap on and washing some type of leafy green—don’t ask Guanheng what it is, all leafy greens look the same to him. “Can you make the soup?”

“Dejun needs ice,” Guanheng says quickly, an excuse so as to not be in the kitchen. He knows Kun can see right through it, with the way he raises an unimpressed eyebrow and puts a hand on his hip. 

“Dejun is a fully functional human being,” he counters, and Guanheng _can_ argue (despite Kun’s statement holding nothing but the truth), but he doesn’t want to; Kun’s arguing skills were out of this world. Maybe it comes from how many years they’ve all spent defying him… He needed a defensive mechanism that _wasn’t_ something related to violence. 

“Dejun needs me?” he tries, and it sounds weak even to his own ears. It sounds weak to Kun too, who snorts. 

“Dejun is going to fall asleep in ten seconds,” he notes, looking up from his cutting board for all of one second to look at Dejun nodding off where he had moved to the couch. “Don’t be a brat, just help me cook.”

“Fine,” Guanheng relents, wrapping three ice cubes in the tea towel. “Let me give him this and I’ll be back.”

“You better,” Kun threatens. “I’m not making your favourite for nothing.”

Admittedly, Guanheng is lighter on his feet at the revelation, and he doesn’t even care about how easy that makes him look. When it comes to Kun’s cooking, he’s okay with admitting he’s easy. 

Kun also picked him up off of the streets all those years ago, so maybe there’s also that bias… 

“Hey, Jun,” Guanheng mutters once he’s within Dejun’s earshot. “Keep this on until it melts, and then you can sleep. The bruises will stay longer if you don’t ice it now.”

Dejun groans, but he does sit up a little to wake himself up. 

“Aren’t you going to keep me company so that I don’t end up strangling Yangyang?” he asks, taking the towel from Guanheng’s hand and pressing it to his cheek. 

“I have to help with dinner tonight,” he says, putting a throw pillow behind Dejun’s head for comfort. “But I’ll wake you up when it’s done.”

“Hm, okay,” he mutters, adjusting himself just a little. “Also, you know you don’t have to worry so much, right? I’ve fought way worse— _Yangyang_ has done much worse.”

Guanheng feels his cheeks heat up just a little. He knew he was a little paranoid, but he didn’t think that Dejun would’ve been able to pick up on it so easily… Maybe he really _hadn’t_ mastered the art of being sneaky. 

“I know… I’m just worried, you know?” he says softly, his fingers tucking some of Dejun’s hair behind his ear. It wasn’t as long on the sides, but his fringe was. Maybe he should get a haircut soon. 

“Don’t be,” comes Dejun’s reply, a bit sharper than what Guanheng was expecting. It makes his fingers freeze for a moment, hesitant eyes looking into the other’s, only to find them glaring at him. 

“Dejun—”

“I don’t know _why_ everyone suddenly thinks I’m a wine glass that’s about to break at any given moment,” he continues, standing up from the couch and matching Guanheng’s height, holding his gaze. “Just because I’m not out there on the field as often as you guys doesn’t mean I’m going to screw everything up.”

“I don’t think that,” Guanheng clears immediately, because he _doesn’t,_ and he doesn’t want Dejun to think that and get the wrong idea. “No one thinks that,” he tacks on, because he also knows that no one sees Dejun as lesser; just like how no one sees Sicheng as lesser. They’d just both be working on something they haven’t done in a while, and it wasn’t a bad thing. It wasn’t even something to be apprehensive about; everyone trusts everyone on their team. 

“Then what is it? Do you think I’m going to blow the mission? Do you think I’m going to mess it up and put everyone in danger?” 

Dejun’s voice is louder now, no doubt carrying to the kitchen, if the way Kun pokes his head out is anything to go by. He can also see Yangyang look at them from the corner of his eye. 

“Of course I don’t think that. I meant what I said that first day Kun asked you on the mission: you’re more than capable, Dejun. You’re not going to put any of us in danger, I know that, and so does everyone else.” 

“Then start acting like it,” Dejun says. “Because I don’t need you doting on me when all I’ve gotten was a punch in the face, and I definitely don’t need to be thrown around to prove that I’m still worthy enough to go on a mission with you.” Dejun directs the latter part of his statement at Yangyang, who at least now has the audacity to look sheepish and guilty.

“I’m sorry if the way I’ve been acting made you feel that way,” Guanheng says sincerely, because he knows the best way to deal with conflict is the nip it in the butt right away. And because fighting with Dejun is his least favourite thing to do. 

Guanheng takes a step closer to Dejun, and finds it easier to breathe when Dejun doesn’t move back. He takes one of the older boy’s hands in his own, holding it between the two of them.

“When I say I’m worried… It’s not because I’m worried you’re going to do something and have things go wrong. I’m worried because there are always going to be parts of the mission that aren’t in our control. I’m worried about _that_. That’s an uncertainty I don’t feel when I have one of you guys in my ears, or when I know we’ve planned a mission perfectly. I only feel it when I remember that there are a hundred things we don’t account for… And I’m worried about something out of our control going wrong and hurting you.”

“I can take care of myself,” Dejun says harshly once more, his eyes narrowed as he looks at Guanheng. Maybe he didn’t word it the right way… 

“I know you can, you do everyday. But Dejun, I _care_ about you. I—You know how I feel about you,” he says lowly, eyes softening when he sees Dejun’s own shift just the tiniest bit at his words. “And if anything happens to you Dejun, when I know that I was there and could’ve done something to stop it—I just… Never want anything bad to ever happen to you,” he sighs, finishing lamley and hoping everything he said didn’t just sound like word vomit. 

“You can’t bring those feelings into this,” Dejun says quietly after some time, his eyes no longer glaring when they look at Guanheng. He looks like he’s going to continue, but then Dejun’s eyes flicker to the living room and kitchen around them, sighs, and then pulls Guanheng down the hallway by the hand. 

They’re going to Dejun’s bedroom, probably because Yangyang is in the living room and Kun is in the kitchen; they know they’ll be alone here. Dejun closes the door behind them, but he doesn’t let go of Guanheng’s hand, not even when he turns to face him, features set hard once more. 

“Sorry, I just didn’t like so many people listening,” he starts, and Guanheng wants to kiss him. But that wasn’t appropriate for right now. “You know that’s how I feel too when you go out on missions, right?”

Guanheng doesn’t say anything. He had toyed with the idea of Dejun worrying over him and then had bathed in the attention, but now that he knows how many knots that anxiety ties in his stomach, he doesn’t want Dejun to feel all of that. He doesn’t think anyone would find those feelings pleasant. 

“Every time?” Guanheng asks softly, despite it being quiet in the bedroom around them. There isn’t any noise bleeding in through the walls, but Guanheng still doesn’t want to ruin the gentle atmosphere around them, despite the serious topic surrounding the air around them. 

“It used to be every time,” Dejun shrugs. “But that’s why you can’t bring your feelings into it. It used to be impossible to work when all I was thinking about were the ‘what ifs’. What _if_ Xuxi runs a minute late? What _if_ Yangyang takes the wrong turn? What _if_ Sicheng gets hurt?”

“And when he did?” the other asks, and it makes the corners of Dejun’s lips quirk up. Sicheng never lies, but he really wasn’t lying when he said they were just one group of terrible people. 

“Well, at least he was the only one, right? If I had been worrying about things like that the entire time, then who knows who else could’ve been hurt? Or how much worse Sicheng could’ve been hurt?” he explains. “I love you guys, but I have to do my job, Heng. And this job doesn’t let me put my feelings first. If I work with my heart, then I don’t think you’d be standing here right now,” he says bluntly, and it’s enough to make Guanheng realize, finally, why Dejun was irritated with how overbearing he’d been. 

“Dejun… You’re so amazing, did you know that?” he settles on saying fondly, his own lips curling up into a smile. He sees Dejun’s lips mirror his, this time forming a proper smile. “I’ll try not to let my emotions take over… But will you also remember that this is the first time you’ll be coming onto the field after this thing happened?” he asks, gesturing between the two of them. 

Dejun giggles. Maybe it was inappropriate considering the context, but there’s not much Guanheng can critique when Dejun laughs like that. 

“Sure, newbie,” he teases, finally dropping Guanheng’s hand and bringing the tea towel back to his cheek. Guanheng forgot about that, and is surprised to find out that all the ice didn’t melt by now. “Try not to be so obsessed with me.”

“Quite the impossible task,” Guanheng smiles ruefully. “Are you still tired? I don’t think I can get out of kitchen duty.”

“Go help Kun,” Dejun hums, turning around and walking over to his bed. He sits down and places the tea towel onto his bedside table, taking out his contact lens box from his side table drawer. Guanheng almost didn’t notice he wasn’t wearing his glasses. “Wake me up when dinner is ready.”

“Sure,” Guanheng agrees easily, walking over just to take the soaking wet tea towel. Feeling how wet the material is, he’s not too sure how effectively he had taken care of Dejun’s bruise. “I can tell Yangyang about how you feel, if you want. He looked a bit guilty when we were leaving.”

“Nah, it’s fine. He’ll come to me crawling on his knees before going to sleep,” he says smugly, and while Guanheng laughs, he can’t deny it. Yangyang and Dejun didn’t really get along when they had first met, and it’s been a running joke in their group. They all know that now they’re as close as any of them are, and that Yangyang specifically feels bad whenever they have a fight. 

“Alright,” Guanheng sighs, watching as Dejun takes his contacts out, and then as he gets into the covers. He leans over Dejun, mindful of the way he cups his cheek as he presses a gentle kiss to his lips. “Sleep well.”

“Thanks, babe,” Dejun smiles, his voice already softer, sleep seeming to easily take over. 

Guanheng leaves without making another sound, and closes the door behind him. 

Once he’s back in the kitchen, Kun doesn’t ask questions. 

  
  


»«

  
  
  


The night before the mission is supposed to be executed, Sicheng tells them he doesn’t need to be doped up on morphine all the time anymore. 

“It doesn’t hurt anymore?” Xuxi asks skeptically, eyeing Sicheng from head to toe. There are obviously no visible injuries, Sicheng’s jeans covering his legs, and the wound under his ribs healing cleanly. 

That was the more intense shot, the bullet aimed at his leg had done nothing more than graze him. The one under his ribs however, was only a hair short of possibly damaging vital organs. Sicheng got lucky, but that doesn’t mean that the healing process still isn’t a bitch—Dejun is watching him now as he changes the dressing, Xuxi also accompanying them. Second to Kun, Xuxi has the most medical knowledge. It was nothing professional, obviously, but for the shit they find themselves in, it was more than enough. 

“Oh, it hurts every time I breathe,” Sicheng snorts, proceeding to pinch his eyebrows. How ironic. “ _But_ , it’s not as bad as it used to be,” he shrugs, hissing lightly when he cleans around his wound with antiseptic. Dejun doesn’t look, and instead focuses on tearing Sicheng a new and clean stretch of gauze. “Plus, a few more weeks and I should be as good as new. Thanks for taking the lead Dejun.”

Sicheng smiles at him through the mirror, and Dejun simply hums absentmindedly. 

“I would’ve had to go either way,” Dejun shrugs, passing Sicheng the gauze. “None of you could have opened the safe. You’re as good as nothing when it comes to coding.”

“I know my fair share!” Sicheng defends, but shrinks again when Xuxi and Dejun both fix him with the same look. “Okay, fine! We get it Dejun, your brain is massive.”

“Yes, that is what I like to hear,” the youngest smiles, and it makes Xuxi laugh. 

Dejun takes his leave from the bathroom first after Xuxi assures he’ll finish helping Sicheng. After that, he intends to go to the kitchen, but is distracted by what he sees Yangyang and Ten doing at the dining table. 

“Hey,” Ten greets, looking up from whatever he was doing only briefly, and then turning back to his work. “There’s some scraps for you if you want.”

Dejun rips his eyes away from Ten struggling to pass thread through the eye of a really small needle, and turns to look at what he had gestured at. 

Like Ten had said, there’s a pile of untouched materials left in front of an empty chair. Dejun has half the mind to go grab a snack from the kitchen first like he had initially planned to do, but something glistening in the little bit of sunlight bleeding through the window catches his attention. 

“No way—you guys got jewelry this time?” he gasps, feeling like an excited little kid when his fingers eagerly grab at the little baggy sitting on top of a pile of mismatched fabric. “But there’s never any jewelry!”

“Yes, that’s why we picked it up for you,” Yangyang says, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Now go, play with your new toys.”

“They’re not _toys_ ,” Dejun huffs, but his actions contradict his words, as he rips open the baggy like a five year old on Christmas morning. “Just shut up and make your shoes.”

“Plan on it,” Yangyang mutters, and then he’s sucked back into the world of painting designs Dejun can never make out onto the shoes he had thrifted. 

Yangyang often does this; going out with Ten and thrifting what feels like too many clothes for the seven of them. But then Ten had opened the door to the world or _upcycling_ to them, and it’s all Ten, Yangyang, and Dejun himself do nowadays. 

Speaking of which, it’s not often they come across jewelry in these shops, but when there is, Dejun always makes sure to snatch them. It seems Ten and Yangyang had done so today, which he appreciates. Guanheng had mentioned something along the lines of wanting new earrings too… 

Thoughts about a snack are thrown out the window as Dejun situates himself comfortably on a chair, grateful that Ten and Yangyang had already brought out all of the supplies they usually use before getting to work. There are pliers, screwdrivers, and other tools Dejun might need when taking apart and reassembling jewelry. 

“Tomorrow’s the mission,” Ten pipes up randomly, finally getting to sewing now that his thread has been passed through his needle. “Do you remember who you’re with?”

“Guanheng is with Sicheng, I’m with you,” Yangyang says, eyes still trained on what he’s drawing on his shoes. He sounds distasteful as he speaks, and spares only one second to glare at Ten. “Which _sucks_ , because all you do is treat missions like a sports event and comment on what’s happening.”

“I’m trying to keep you entertained,” Ten reasons, eyes then flickering to Dejun and not minding whatever Yangyang is mumbling about under his breath. “You and Xuxi stuck with Kun?”

“Yep. I’m always stuck with Xuxi,” Dejun grunts, eyes squinting as he tries to open a stubborn jump ring with his pliers. Maybe he should’ve brought his glasses. “Since I was eleven.”

“I still remember when I found you two,” Ten smiles, sounding like a mother reminiscing, when he’s truly anything but. “Two little kids speaking a language I couldn’t understand.” 

“Who are you calling little kids? You’re only three years older than us?” 

“Does it matter? You two used to look like twigs before I fed you meals,” Ten sulks, and if Dejun cared to look up, he would see the way Ten’s eyes sparkle with memories. “Joint at the hip, even now. You gym rats,” he scoffs, and Dejun ducks his head to ensure the upwards quirk of his lips isn’t visible. 

“Don’t get emotional,” Dejun mutters. “I don’t even like Xuxi that much.”

“Don’t lie to your gege,” a new voice pipes up, and Dejun rolls his eyes immediately. “You used to not be able to sleep unless I was around.”

“Anyone sleeping on the streets would feel that way,” Dejun bites, glaring at Xuxi when the latter makes himself comfortable in the chair in front of him. “Also, you’re the one who used to give me extra servings of food.”

“Because you used to be _little_ , Xiao,” Xuxi reasons, one of his eyebrows cocked upwards. “I had to keep you fed, you were my only didi at the time. Look at how big you’ve grown through my care,” he coos over-exaggeratedly, reaching a hand over the table and trying to pet Dejun’s head. 

Dejun swerves, and looks up from his scrap jewelry to glare at the older boy. 

“Don’t,” he hisses, kicking Xuxi’s shin under the table. “I thought we agreed to forget about the past.”

“Why do you want to forget the two years you’ve spent on the run with Xuxi?” Yangyang asks rhetorically. “Sounds like a sick movie plot to me.”

“Not when you’re eleven,” Dejun sighs, and suddenly, the air is a bit more tense. Even Yangyang has looked up from where he was painting his shoelaces. Hesitantly, Dejun also raises his head from the chain he was trying to unlink. “Oh come on, don’t look at me like that,” he chuckles awkwardly, gulping when he sees Xuxi’s eyes cast down. 

If Xuxi was too apprehensive to make eye contact, Dejun knows he should be more than a bit cautious. 

“We have each other now, don’t we?” Dejun says softly, internally grimacing. It wasn’t usually _him_ who spewed sap in the form of words about the little family of bandits they managed pieced together, but he’d do what he had to in order to make these six boys happy. No matter how un-sneaky that makes him. “Who cares about the past? It’s not like it matters how we got here…”

“From the subway stations,” Yangyang whispers, looking up at Dejun without raising his head too much. “If I got caught one more time I would’ve been put behind bars,” he admits, but he doesn’t look one bit sorry. Dejun doesn’t think any of them are one bit sorry for any of the things they’ve done. 

“And then I came across you stealing more cans of spray paint,” Ten chuckles, once again fond, and for once, Yangyang smiles at Ten’s incessant teasing. “You were a bit too happy to eat something warm.”

“Like Dejun said, anyone sleeping on the streets would feel that way,” he shrugs, and Dejun finds himself nudging shoulders with Yangyang. He already knew of what Yangyang was up to before being housed by Ten and Kun, but hearing it again just reminds him of how unnecessary their rocky start had been; Dejun and Yangyang haven’t ever been that much different. 

“There would be days where I wouldn’t sleep,” Xuxi says quietly, almost so quiet that Dejun hadn’t heard it. 

All three of them turn their attention to Xuxi, who catches Dejun’s eye hesitantly.

“Hunger pains were hard to ignore,” Dejun hums, nodding his head slowly. He looks down at the mess of chains in front of him so that he wouldn’t have to look at the emotion he can’t pinpoint in Xuxi’s eyes. “Other days it would just be too cold to sleep.”

“I wouldn’t sleep because I was scared,” Xuxi says, and it sounds like he’s holding his breath. The sudden revelation makes Dejun’s gaze freeze on the other, and once again, their eyes meet. “I didn’t want something to happen to us while we were sleeping. To you,”

“You never told me that,” Dejun comments, and he’s not sure if his voice sounds weak just because he’s hearing new information, or if it’s because he’s riddled with guilt. 

Food was already hard to come across in those times, Dejun couldn’t imagine not even trying to get some sleep. And that going on for days… 

Suddenly images of eleven and twelve year old Xuxi pop to mind, when he was significantly smaller than what he should’ve been at their age. But there was something else that will forever be ingrained in Dejun’s brain from those images… 

And that’s how Xuxi would smile everyday. No matter what Dejun knew of or didn’t know of, Xuxi was always smiling. 

“I never told anyone that,” Xuxi whispers, and Dejun momentarily forgets that Ten and Yangyang are sitting with them too. 

“Xuxi—”

“Y’know, you may say we should forget about the past,” he continues, sending Dejun a wry smile, and the latter thinks it’s because he doesn’t know what else to do. Smiling has always been Xuxi’s go-to. “But I can’t forget those feelings that easily.”

That _word_ —Dejun doesn’t know how to act when it’s suddenly brought up. Feelings… God, he’s never been good with them. And maybe that comes from the abandonment all those years ago, living like a heathen knowing there was only one person in the world he could trust, or maybe it was just a part of _Dejun_ at this point. 

All he knows is that things only get dangerous whenever feelings are involved. 

“I haven’t forgotten them either,” Dejun whispers back honestly, and it feels like the words are caught in his throat. Maybe it’s because thinking of the past reignites memories he’s tried to hide and suppress. Or maybe it’s because of the new information he’s learning… “But it’s better now, isn’t it? You can sleep, you can eat. You can raise Bella with me,” he adds, just for a sense of their usual banter. 

And he knows that Xuxi appreciates the normalcy, seeing as he lets out a tiny breathless laugh. 

“You’re still a terrible mother to her,” Xuxi sighs, but he sounds fond, and if not, a little choked up. 

From under the table, he feels Xuxi lock their ankles together. 

“Then it only makes sense that you’re a terrible father to her,”

“You guys really need to work on how to show your emotions,” a new voice pipes up, and this time all four of them at the table look up to see Kun sauntering up to them. He briefly glances at what Ten is making, smiles a little, and then looks back between Dejun and Xuxi. “For two people who insisted on sleeping in the same bed for their first four months here, you two can’t say ‘I love you’ for the life of you.”

Xuxi tsks the same time Dejun rolls his eyes, and in the back of his mind, Dejun thinks that he doesn’t even need to tell he loves him in order to know that until the end, they’ll always be each others’ first family. 

“I’ll take those words to my grave,” Dejun mutters, finally turning back to attempting to unlink these chains, and hoping that no one can see the tiny grin on his face. This is his family, sure, but he still finds it extraordinarily difficult to voice any of his affections to them. The most he’ll make known is not shying away from their touches.

There was always one exception to his rules though… 

“Those are pretty,” the object of his exceptions says, voice right in his ear and breath hitting the back of his neck. “You always make the prettiest jewelry, Junnie.”

Dejun turns to look over his shoulder and sees Guanheng looking at whatever he’s managed to put together for the earrings so far. He had meant for it to be a surprise for Guanheng, but oh well. 

Instead of words, Dejun’s mouth finds Guanheng’s and he kisses him slowly, pleasantly surprised when Guanheng kisses him back without any hesitation. Maybe that’s why he’s always been drawn to Guanheng; where he had grown up to always be hesitant of people, Guanheng never made him feel the need to be that way. In turn, he seems to never make Guanheng feel that way. 

“ _Gross_ —You two! Cut it out, no one wants to see you guys making out,” Sicheng groans from where he’s limping up to the rest of them. Ten immediately gets up from his seat to help him. 

“I thought it was pretty hot,” Yangyang shrugs, and it makes Dejun scrunch his face and flip him off. 

“Dude, don’t be weird,” Guanheng simply sighs, taking the last empty seat next to Dejun as Ten helps Sicheng into the seat he was previously occupying. 

“I was gonna do this after dinner, but seeing as we’re all here, we can do this now,” Kun hums, walking to the front of the table and taking a seat at the head. There’s no assigned seating, but it seems like they always let Kun sit there. It’s probably deserved though, afterall, Kun is the one who had taken them all in here. 

But Dejun has already faced enough emotions to last him the next month, so he pushes those thoughts away before they can take over more of his mind. 

“What are we doing?” Guanheng asks, and Dejun feels more than sees the former put an arm around the back of his chair. Dejun doesn’t look up from where he’s still assembling the earring, but his ears are listening. 

“Review,” Kun says easily, eyes darting to Sicheng right after. “Sicheng is perfect with the tech and everything, so Guanheng, you’ll be in good hands,” he assures, which garners a simple thumbs up from the younger. 

Kun then turns to Yangyang. 

“You’re with Ten, mainly because since he’ll be in the van, he can warn you of people who are coming into the warehouse. You’ll be twenty feet behind them, right? I trust you can take care of it, if something arises.”

“Of course you can,” Yangyang smiles brightly, lacing his already dried shoelaces through his sneakers. Dejun has yet to see the final product, but he bets it’s as pretty as all of Yangyang’s custom pieces. “You should be asking if you can trust Ten to pay attention the whole time.”

“Like I’d ever endanger my babies,” he tsks, digging two fingers under Yangyang’s ribs in repramantion. 

“And I’ll handle Xuxi and Dejun,” Kun continues, ignoring how Ten and Yangyang start bickering. Again. “You two are to stick _together_ , that’s the plan, so don’t forget it,” he says sharply, looking at them both like if he stared hard enough, the instructions will be drilled into their brains. Which, granted, they feel pretty drilled into Dejun’s brain if he’s being honest. 

“Ditto,” Xuxi hums, busy threading shoelaces through Yangyang’s other sneaker. “I’ll keep an eye on Little Xiao while Little Huang keeps an eye on us.” 

Guanheng scrunches his face at the nicknames, and Yangyang makes a disgruntled noise at them. 

“What am I then?” he asks, turning to Xuxi expectantly. 

“You? You’re just little,” the older boy snorts, and it elicits a round of laughter from around the table, everyone ignoring Yangyang’s squawks about how he was taller than most of them. 

As Kun goes over mandatory precautions like he does before every mission, Dejun drowns his voice out. He instead focuses on closing the last jump ring which is holding a jade coloured bead in it, letting out a satisfied hum when he’s finished. 

“Do you like it?” he asks quietly, turning to face Guanheng. The latter smiles as he looks at the earring Dejun is dangling between his fingers, and nods gently. 

“You’re talented, but that’s not a surprise,” he compliments, holding his hand out when Dejun asks for it. 

“It’s for you,” Dejun admits, dropping the piece of jewelry into Guanheng’s awaiting palm. When he looks up, he sees Guanheng’s eyes widen. “You said you wanted new earrings…”

“I don’t even remember when I said that,” Guanheng chuckles, his smile bright as it stretches from cheek to cheek. And it’s all because of Dejun. “You remembered… Thank you, babe. You’re the best,” he mumbles, solidifying his statement with a kiss to Dejun’s lips. 

Dejun smiles into the kiss, and ignores the complaints and gagging sounds the two of them garner from the others around the table.

Instead, he kisses Guangheng harder, and slips a hand into his hair.

Letting himself forget about the mission that’s set to take place in a few hours, Dejun focuses on how Guanheng’s smile feels like _love_ against his lips. 


	2. elegant blade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Is your gun loaded, Heng?” Ten asks after a few minutes pass in silence. Guanheng really doesn’t know where they are: he’s pretty sure Ten hasn’t taken a turn in twenty minutes. 
> 
> “Yeah, Xuxi made me load it,” he answers, rolling his eyes and feeling smug when Xuxi isn’t able to catch him doing that through the rearview mirror. “Which is redundant—I’m not shooting. I don’t shoot.”
> 
> “You never know,” Xuxi shrugs, locking his phone and casting the car in complete darkness once again. “Anything can happen…”

“Ice cream,”

“It’s too late at night for ice cream,” Ten sighs from his seat behind the wheel, eyes squinting the tiniest bit as he looks onto the road. “Xuxi, can you pass me my glasses?”

“Why did you start driving without them, old man?” Xuxi asks as he rummages through the glove compartment from the passenger’s seat, finding the case Ten keeps his nighttime driving glasses in. “You know you’re legally supposed to be wearing glasses when you’re driving.”

“Mhm, because I follow the law, don’t I, Xuxi?” Ten asks rhetorically, tone bored as he puts his glasses on. They look a bit like the ones Dejun has, except Ten’s frames are bigger. “Wouldn’t want to break any of them.” 

“No one has ever said that it’s too late for ice cream,” Dejun sulks from where he’s sitting in the middle row with Guanheng; Yangyang is stretched along the back row of seats under the excuse of napping on their way to the warehouse. 

“Why don’t you just knock out like Yangyang? Spare me a headache, baby,” Ten says instead, and it makes Dejun huff and cross his arms over his chest. 

He hears Guanheng laugh at his antics from beside him, and suddenly wishes he didn’t sit in the middle seat. But he guesses it was the right move after all when Guanheng grabs his hand and brings it up to his lips for a kiss. 

“I’ll buy you ice cream on the way back,” he mutters against his knuckles, and even in the darkness of the car (since well, granted it’s almost 2:00 am), Dejun is able to make out the small smile on Guanheng’s lips.

“That’s why you’re the best,” Dejun sighs happily, leaning his head down onto Guanheng’s shoulder, now feeling more than satisfied. “And my favourite.”

“You’re my favourite too,” Guanheng says against his hair, pressing a small kiss to the crown of his head. “You should sleep a little now if you want… We’re still an hour away.”

“Sounds good,” Dejun mumbles, doing just that and getting a bit more comfortable next to Guanheng, throwing his legs over the other’s lap just because he can. 

Guanheng doesn’t mind, and just looks out the window and tries to make out the scenery despite the yellow streetlight not being of any help as Ten drives them through empty, pitch black roads. 

Ten is humming along to some song that’s playing quietly on the radio, Xuxi is scrolling through his phone doing God knows what, and if Guanheng focuses hard enough, he can hear Yangyang letting out tiny snores from behind him. 

“Is your gun loaded, Heng?” Ten asks after a few minutes pass in silence. Guanheng really doesn’t know where they are: he’s pretty sure Ten hasn’t taken a turn in twenty minutes. 

“Yeah, Xuxi made me load it,” he answers, rolling his eyes and feeling smug when Xuxi isn’t able to catch him doing that through the rearview mirror. “Which is redundant—I’m not shooting. I _don’t_ shoot.”

“You never know,” Xuxi shrugs, locking his phone and casting the car in complete darkness once again. “Anything can happen…” 

“Oh, lighten up,” Ten groans, momentarily taking his eyes off the road just to fix Guanheng with a look. He’d be more concerned about how leisurely Ten drives if he wasn’t used to it. Plus, Ten performs better under pressure anyways. “You’re never this tense for a mission.”

“That’s because his boyfriend is never with us,” Xuxi snickers from the front seat, and it makes Guanheng blush. He’s so glad it’s dark right now. And that the moonlight isn’t hitting his face. 

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Guanheng mutters, focused on running his thumb over Dejun’s knuckles in hopes that it keeps him asleep. He’s not too sure how well he’ll dwell with the mortification which comes with knowing Dejun was listening to this conversation happening in front of all of their friends. 

“How much longer are you going to keep that up?” Ten sighs, and the exasperation is practically bleeding through his tone. “You two are practically dating. Just suck it up and pop the question.”

“Don’t make it sound like we’re about to get married,” Guanheng mumbles, and whether it’s to divert to subject or because he means it, he’s not too sure. 

“I wouldn’t even put it past you two,” Xuxi scoffs, and while it makes Guaheng’s blush darken, it also makes his heart skip a beat. He never thinks about the future, mainly because when you live like them, there’s never really a set _future_ to look forward to. 

But if he’d have to think about it, a future with Dejun in it sounds like something that’d fall into place naturally. So maybe he didn’t have to worry about it then… It’d simply happen, if it was between him and Dejun. 

“Anyways, loosen up,” Ten reiterates, and Guanheng is glad the topic is dropped. Like this, he can drop a peck on Dejun’s hairline without being conscious of the looks the other two might throw at him. “The last thing you need to be is hyper aware of everything on a mission.”

Guanheng knows this better than he’d like to: his first mission was a terrible shit show because he was so incredibly tense. Kun had assured him it was normal for the first few missions to play out like that, but he’d still been adamant of carrying himself the right way after that. He’d hate to put himself in danger; and then even more now that he’s realized that Dejun had been feeling this ball of tangled nerves in the pit of his stomach every time Guanheng has been sent onto a mission. 

“Shouldn’t you be hyper aware?” Xuxi questions with a mumble, and Ten makes a humming sound from the back of his throat. 

“Fixating on every detail is equally as distracting as being too relaxed,” Ten explains. Finally, he takes a turn. “Too many things which can slip past you.”

Xuxi hums as well before looking out the window, and when Guanehng notices the light which shines across the other’s face, he looks outside too. 

Now, it looks like they’re nearing more civilization. Or at least, what seems to be somewhere which is close enough to civilization. There are brighter street lamps again, as well as a few other cars joining them on the road. 

“Is it far from here?” Guanheng asks, unable to see the GPS device clearly from where he’s sitting. “Kun said they’re still enemies which we’ve dealt with before…”

“And it’s for that exact reason they thought they could fool us into thinking we’d have to be kept on our toes,” Ten snickers, switching the radio station to something else. Guanheng had forgotten that the radio was even on. “But they’re stupider than they think we are, and way, _way_ stupider than Kun.”

“Don’t go popping a boner now thinking about how intelligent Kun is,” Xuxi groans, and it garners a snort from Guanheng. Unfortunately, Ten can’t really refute, it wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened. “Not while you’re driving us to our suicide mission.”

“I thought we agreed to stop calling it that,” the eldest in the car sighs, and Guanheng is pretty sure he’d kick Xuxi if he didn’t have to keep his foot on the gas. “We wouldn’t purposefully put you guys in dangerous situations.”

“That’s very ironic,” Guanheng hums, ripping his eyes off of the window just to check the time on his watch. _1:36 am_. “Don’t say things like that when you’re a part of an illegal crime group.”

Ten purses his lips after that, but doesn’t bother saying anything else. Probably because he knows that anything against that would be a weak argument. 

The rest of the drive goes by in relative silence, with the occasional question thrown around. Other than that, the only sounds are the sounds of Ten’s tires against gravel, his humming, and Xuxi tapping his foot incessantly in the last ten minutes of the drive. 

That’s also when Yangyang stirs awake, groaning and stretching his limbs in the back row of the car. 

“Are we there yet?” his scratchy voice asks, and Guanheng turns his head around just a little, only to see Yangyang strapping himself into his gear, guns at his disposal under his clothes and throwing knives alongside them. 

“Couple more minutes,” Ten answers, and long gone is the casual and playful tone of his voice, now replaced with a stern and authoritative edge. Ten always turns into a no-bullshit type of person when they’re on a mission, and Guanheng finds the switch comical. “Tap into your in-ears now. Guanheng, wake up Dejun and get ready.”

Guangheng puts his in-ears in before waking Dejun up, and then feels the tiniest bit guilty for having to lift Dejun’s head off of his shoulder. 

“Hey, Dejun,” he calls gently, shaking the older boy’s shoulders a little to get him to wake up. And it works a bit, as Dejun starts to stir and blink his eyes open slowly. “We’re almost at the warehouse.”

That seems to wake Dejun up quicker, seeing as he’s now rapidly blinking his eyes open to gather himself quickly. He sits up, brings a fist to his eyes to rub the sleep out, and Guanheng has to bite his tongue before saying something that would merit a gag from Yangyang _and_ Sicheng, who’s already connected and is able to hear everything through the earpiece.

“Do we have some water?” Dejun croaks, fingers a bit slow as he grabs his own earpiece, wincing when he puts them in. He assumes it’s for the same reason Xuxi winces; Kun was probably yelling again if the way Guanheng can faintly hear Kun from Winwin’s microphone is anything to go by.

“Here,” Yangyang mutters from behind them, handing Dejun a half empty bottle of water. Dejun mumbles a thanks under his breath before drinking the rest of the water, promptly tossing it back to Yangyang without looking, and then ignoring how Yangyang starts grumbling about him being rude. “Asshole.”

“Make sure your equipment is secure, and that stuff won’t fall out,” Ten tells them from the front, all four of them proceeding to pat themselves down to make sure all of their weapons are secure and within reach. “And for the love of God, tie your damn hair back. I don’t want a repeat of the time Guanheng almost got killed because his stupid bangs were in his eyes.”

“I want people to know at least handsome people are robbing them,” Guanheng says defensively, and makes no move to tie his somewhat long hair. The mission Ten is talking about had taken place almost a year ago, but his hair is almost back to that same long length. 

“No one is looking at your face while you shoot them, I promise,” Yangyang deadpans, and when Dejun turns around, he sees that the younger is putting a headband on and making sure nothing is there to obstruct his vision. “And it’s not like they’ll remember what you look like after waking up from the little tranquilizers you hit them with,” he continues with a scoff, and Dejun would laugh if Guanheng didn’t start scowling. 

“Just tie it up,” Dejun mutters, holding his own wrist out and showing Guanheng the black hair tie he has wrapped around the slender part. “I’ll do it too, and then we’ll match.”

Guanheng _almost_ feels childish for accepting the hair tie just because Dejun said he’ll tie his hair up too, but easily forgets about that as he watches Dejun gather all of his long, white hair into a bunch at the back of his head, carelessly missing a few strands near the front which end up framing his face prettily, of all things, and then tying it all together. It looks messy, but Guanheng _can’t_ take his eyes away.

Maybe he should convince Dejun to tie his hair up more often… 

“Stop staring, idiot,” Dejun mutters after a few seconds go by, apparently of Guanheng silently staring at Dejun. “Now is _not_ the time to marvel at how hot I am, but I do appreciate it.”

“ _Remind me to never send you on a mission with Guanheng ever again_ ,” Kun mutters through their in-ears, and the disgust is practically tangible. Which is incredibly hypocritical, since Dejun can’t even count how many horrendous things Ten and Kun have said during missions on one hand. 

“Shut up, Kun ge,” Dejun hisses, tearing his eyes away from Guanheng just to adjust the holster around his waist; housing two guns, one tranquilizer, and two knives. When he looks back up, Guanheng’s hair is sitting atop of his head, looking a lot like a two-leaf clover. 

Dejun snorts. 

“You look ridiculous,” he admits to the other, watching as he shrugs and flicks the tuft of hair around. 

“Apparently, no one is looking at my face. So I guess it’ll be fine,” Guanheng sighs, and it has Dejun smiling fondly at him before the car comes to a halt, and Ten is unbuckling his seatbelt. 

“I don’t think I need to remind you four of how terribly outnumbered you’ll be,” he starts, craning his neck in order to look at all of them. He fixes them each with a look. “Stick together and stay in the formation _at all times._ There might be tens more security guards than there are of you, but the majority of them will be oafs who think brandishing their guns around is threatening.

“Also, there shouldn’t even be much worry about you guys getting caught; you need to be quiet, and don’t let anyone see you,” Ten says sternly, and all four of them nod in unison when he’s done speaking. “I’m not worried because they're a dangerous lot, I’m worried because they don’t think twice and are reckless. Don’t draw attention to yourselves, don’t get hurt.”

“Ditto,” Xuxi mutters, looking over his shoulder and out the windshield. “Now?”

“Go ahead,” Ten breathes out, sitting back in his seat and setting up his computer. He puts his in-ears in and then looks at Yangyang. “Can you hear me?” 

“Loud and clear,” Yangyang hums affirmatively, and then somehow maneuvers his long legs over the middle row of seats until he’s sitting next to Dejun, a hand on the door handle, ready to step out. “Let’s go?”

“Keep in the shadows,” Ten hisses a final time, and then he’s unlocking the doors, and Xuxi and Yangyang are spilling out in seconds. 

Guanheng expects Dejun to spill out following Yangyang, but instead he turns to him and cups his face with two hands. 

“Stay safe,” he mumbles, delivering a short but sweet peck to his lips right after. “Twenty feet ahead, you go first,” he whispers, their lips brushing against each other as he speaks. Guanheng wants to stay like this with Dejun for longer, but then he remembers that they’re supposed to be carrying out a mission, and that kissing Dejun would put them behind schedule. 

“You too,” Guanheng settles on humming, leaving a final and quick kiss to the corner of Dejun’s mouth before exiting out the door he was sitting next to. 

“ _I am definitely never sending you two out together if that’s how disgusting you’re going to be_ ,” Kun spits from Dejun’s earpiece, and it makes him roll his eyes before getting out of the car, closing the door behind him, and promptly cutting off whatever Ten was saying. If it was really that important, he could tap into any of their channels. 

“Next to me,” Xuxi mutters once Dejun is within earshot, and Dejun makes sure to cast a final glance back to Yangyang, who’s hiding in the shadows and waiting for them to put some distance between them. When he looks to the front, he can only vaguely make out Guanheng’s frame well in front of them. 

“Well start walking,” Dejun huffs, nudging Xuxi’s shoulder and making the latter stumble a little before they’re slowly following the path Guanheng is clearing for them. 

“ _You guys are supposed to be quiet_ ,” Kun hisses, and the sound of his voice is a bit jarring when it’s the only sound amongst the crows during this time at night. “ _So shut the fuck up_.”

“Well, you’re a bit cranky today,” Dejun scoffs in a low voice, but of course, it doesn’t manage to slip past Kun, who has more than a few colourful words to retort with. 

Dejun drops it after that. 

He doesn’t know how much time has passed, but eventually, he and Xuxi are walking through a back door which they’ve unlocked with a passcode Sicheng has recited to them. 

“ _Keep your weapons ready_ ,” Kun murmurs, and Dejun’s hand goes to his waist like muscle memory, his fingers closing around the butt of his tranquilizer gun. “ _There’s supposed to be ten guards on this level, but they’re scattered. Guanheng has taken one down already, so all you need to do is deal with the rest before they can spot any of you_.”

Dejun still feels relatively calm as he and Xuxi walk deeper into the warehouse, still on the first floor, and past a knocked out body that has a dart lodged in the thigh. No doubt Guanheng’s work; he prefers to shoot below the waist so that he doesn't have to see. 

“ _To your left, Dejun_ ,” Kun recites in his ears, and the second the words leave his mouth, Dejun is pivoting on his heels and aiming to the left, firing a dart and successfully landing it into the guard’s shoulder. Before the body of the guard can hit the ground and send a resonating sound through the entire floor, Dejun scrambles over to catch him, proceeding to lay the body down onto the ground gently.

That had been something Ten had taught them, so that the _thump_ of a body falling to the ground wouldn’t alert anyone else. 

Dejun has lost sight of Guanheng by now, but he doesn’t get any time to think about it when he sees Xuxi jerk and turn around, sending a dart flying into another guard. Xuxi manages to catch his body the same time Dejun hears heavy footsteps approaching. 

It’s times like this that he appreciates Ten making them tie their hair, because now Dejun has a clear view of the approaching guard, and sends a clean shot towards them. It’s a bit more of a distance to cover in order to catch the body in time, but Dejun manages to make it there before any noise can be made. 

“ _Dejun, 8 o’clock, Xuxi, 4 o’clock_ ” comes Kun’s voice, and Dejun and Xuxi are quick to acknowledge the positions and send their darts flying. 

When Dejun gives the area a scan to assess if there are any more guards nearby, he sees Xuxi shoot right past Dejun. 

“It’s me, you buffoon,” Yangyang’s voice hisses, glaring at the two of them once he’s in their field of vision. “There’s no more on the first floor, I took care of the rest. Now start fucking walking before you lose track of Heng.”

At the mention of Guanheng, Dejun’s eyes are quick to look around trying to scan the area for him. He spots him easily though; he’s the only other one standing amidst all the knocked out bodies. It also helps that he’s wearing a pair of sneakers Yangyang had customized a few months ago; Dejun wasn’t going to lose him easily because of those. 

When Guanheng had first started wearing custom pieces on missions, Dejun had asked if it was a safety hazard, since it made Guanheng identifiable. That was when Kun told him he disables all of the cameras before every mission; which honestly makes sense, so Dejun isn’t sure why he hadn’t thought of that before. 

Dejun and Xuxi follow Guanheng while maintaining the twenty feet of space between them, looking around every minute or so to assure that they really were alone on this floor. 

Just when the stairs Kun had mentioned, the ones which take them all the way up to the security room, come into Dejun’s sight, something else on his right side catches his attention. 

“Xuxi,” he whispers, slapping the other’s arms and eliciting a grunt from him. “Xuxi, Xuxi.”

“ _Dejun, shut up_ ,” Kun groans, but he doesn’t listen, and Xuxi doesn’t take it as a warning either, as he urges Dejun to speak with another hum. 

“Follow me,” Dejun says softly, wrapping a hand around Xuxi’s arm so that he couldn’t stray away from him. 

“Where are we going?” Xuxi questions curiously, at the same time that Kun exasperatedly asks what he’s doing. 

“I saw this and I want it,” Dejun says simply, and proceeds to ignore Kun’s nagging about following orders and not straying from the plan. Normally, he’s very good at following the rules, but Ten hadn’t stopped for ice cream on the way here, despite Dejun’s favourite ice cream place falling on route to the warehouse, and now there was an entire freezer section at Dejun’s disposal. 

“ _Xiao Dejun_ ,” Kun hisses, and Dejun winces, only momentarily. “ _Yangyang is following you thinking this is the mission path, get back to work_.”

“Well, when Yangyang finds us he’ll have a treat waiting for him,” Dejun says with a huff, unceremoniously opening a freezer door and grabbing a box of ice cream. 

It’s an assorted box of drumstick cones, and Dejun hadn’t been able to resist when his eyes first landed on the box from a distance. And he’s glad he didn’t, because upon closer inspection, he sees that there’s a mint chocolate flavoured drumstick. 

Unfortunately, the individual cones aren’t labelled, so Dejun has to open them all to figure out what flavour they are. 

The first one he opens ends up being a strawberry cone, and he hands it to Xuxi without thinking twice about it—strawberry was Xuxi’s favourite. 

“Oh sweet,” Xuxi says happily, tearing into the ice cream and immediately taking a big bite. “Good call.”

“ _Not a good call!_ ” Kun scolds, or at least tries to scold. Dejun and Xuxi weren’t really listening. “ _Yangyang, Guanheng; Dejun and Xuxi are being idiots in the freezer section_ ,” Kun says into their shared channel, and it makes Dejun roll his eyes once more. 

“ _What did I tell you about staying in the shadows? The freezers are not the shadows!_ ” Ten says, and Dejun only hums mindlessly, still not really listening. He’s a man in the midst of a mission: where was the mint chocolate chip ice cream cone?

“ _What the hell, babe?_ ” Guanheng’s voice asks through his earpiece, and it makes Dejun grin when he hears the whininess. Probably from having to walk all the way back to the freezers. 

“ _Yeah, what the hell,_ babe?” Yangyang grumbles. 

“Shut the fuck up, Yang,” Dejun grunts, opening the second cone just as he sees Yangyang in his peripheral vision. It’s a caramel drumstick. Dejun scrunches his nose in distaste before tossing the ice cream to Yangyang, who catches it immediately thanks to his out of this world reflexes. 

“Wait, this is my favourite,” Yangyang smiles, suddenly ten times more cheery than when he had been complaining over the channel. 

“ _Can you guys not carry out a mission without someone supervising you?_ ” Kun asks, and it’s very clear he’s gritting his teeth by the way he sounds. Dejun finds it all parts amusing and no parts threatening. “ _You have thirty minutes to get in, snatch the harddrive, and then get out_ ,” he reminds them, and it’s then that Dejun hears Guanheng’s footsteps. 

“That’s plenty of time,” Guanheng assures, but he’s still looking at the three of them incredulously. “Are you guys serious?”

“Yeah man,” Yangyang hums, already having managed to smear ice cream on his cheek. 

“This one’s chocolate,” Dejun smiles sweetly, holding out the ice cream to Guanheng, and just like he expected, Guanheng accepts the treat with a grumble. 

“ _Don’t tell me you took the ice cream_ ,” Ten moans frustratedly, and thankfully, this time Yangyang also laughs with Dejun. He thinks Xuxi tries to laugh too, but it comes out all garbled because of the waffle cone crunching around inside his mouth. “ _I will leave you four in that warehouse if you aren’t out in time._ ”

“ _No you won’t_ ,” Sicheng snorts, and it elicits Ten less than eloquently telling him to shut up. 

“Aha!” Dejun finally cries, dropping the rest of the ice cream box and triumphantly holding up his mint chocolate chip cone. 

“ _Are you trying to get killed?_ ” Kun asks through the earpiece, his voice sounding strangled. “ _You need to be silent_ now _if you don’t want to stay silent forever_.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dejun dismisses, licking around his ice cream the same time Yangyang pops the last bit of the cone into his mouth. He and Xuxi have finished their ice cream, and Guanheng is halfway done with his. “We’re going.” 

And so they get back into formation, but not before Dejun presses another kiss to Guanheng’s lips before they part ways again. 

“I told you not to kiss me whenever you eat that shit,” Guanheng groans, but there’s no heat in his words, and the weight gets lost when he complains as he’s just smiling at Dejun. 

“I don’t listen to the rules,” Dejun smiles back, before turning his back on Guanheng and settling by Xuxi’s side once more, waiting for Guanheng to clear the path before them, and lead them towards the stairs. 

This time, it’s an easier affair since it doesn’t seem like any other guards were alerted of their presence, which makes the walk to the bottom of the stairs relatively quick. 

“ _Up five flights, and it’ll be the first door on your right_ ,” Kun tells him and Xuxi, back on their private channel. “ _And no more detours_.”

“No promises,” Dejun whispers honestly, and then shrugs, even though he knows Kun can’t see him. Perhaps it was just a force of habit. 

Clearing the first flight of stairs is easy, but when Dejun are Xuxi are at the top, the former hears sudden rapid footsteps, loud noise, and grunts coming from above: clearly where Guanheng is. 

“ _Don’t worry about Guanheng,_ ” Kun tells him, and Dejun’s heart starts beating wildly in his chest. It’s different when Dejun is sitting in front of his computer and giving Guanheng instructions through an earpiece, versus when he’s merely a flight of stairs beneath where he’s very obviously fighting off a guard. “ _You can’t let it be known that there’s more of you, they’ll start sending backup._ ”

Dejun wants to argue, wants to ask how he was expected to just stand still when it sounds like Guanheng is outnumbered above them, but he knows Kun is right. If he was back behind a screen for this mission, maybe he would’ve told whoever was in his position the same thing. 

Xuxi can probably feel how tense Dejun is, or he sees the way the younger is gnawing his bottom lip between his teeth. Whichever one it is, he assures Dejun with a simple finger pressed to his own lips, silently telling Dejun to _be quiet._

Dejun nods, and then watches with bated breath as Xuxi takes slow, tentative steps up the stairs. 

A part of him wants to tell him to knock it off, but another part of him wants Guanheng to have some backup. And if Guanheng is to get backup, they need to become backup now; before more people get suspicious of the noise and more guards start pouring in. 

“ _Sicheng, look for exits_ ,” Dejun hears Kun hiss, and it’s clearly not meant for his ears, if the way Kun’s voice is a bit muffled is anything to go by. It makes Dejun’s jaw tense with the words he can’t voice out loud, but he sucks it up for now and follows Xuxi up the stairs with equal light footsteps. 

“Yangyang, be careful,” Dejun mutters under his breath, aware of how he’s speaking into the main channel, and that Yangyang is able to hear him. 

“Ready?” Xuxi whispers to him, just as they have a clear view through the gaps of the stairs to where Guanheng is trying to take down two guards as quietly as possible. Dejun nods. 

“ _Ready what? Xuxi, don’t do anything_ —”

“Three,” Xuxi starts, at least having the audacity to look sheepish when he catches Dejun’s eyes, the both of them acknowledging that they’re ignoring Kun’s words, and will definitely get an earful of him back home. “Two…”

Guanheng lets out a particularly loud grunt just then, and it makes Dejun’s blood boil. He wants nothing more than to lodge a bullet into the skull of whichever dumbass guard is laying his hands onto Guanheng. 

Dejun tightens his grip on the butt of one of his guns, and sees Xuxi do the same thing out of his peripheral vision. 

“Fuck,” Guanheng grits out, almost inaudible over the sound of Kun telling them, “ _Don’t do anything stupid, and stick to the plan_!”

“One.”

Xuxi and Dejun take simultaneous steps up the stairs, and Dejun hasn’t even reached the top before he takes his gun out and shoots a bullet right at one of the guard’s hands, knocking the gun out of their hand and earning a really, _really_ loud curse in return. 

Dejun doesn’t have time to think before he aims towards the guard’s knees, putting two bullets through his kneecaps and rendering him immobile and writhing on the floor. 

He turns around with his gun poised and at eye level, just to see that the other guard is unconscious on the ground, and that Xuxi is helping Guanheng up from the floor. 

“Good?” Dejun asks them both nod, having the two of them nod. “Yang?”

“Clear,” Yangyang’s voice says, and Dejun is able to hear it from the bottom of the stairs, as well as through his earpiece. 

“ _You lot are never working together ever again_ ,” Ten says into their main channel, and it has Guanheng snickering. “ _Yangyang baby, don’t you dare move from your position._ ”

“Sure,” Yangyang hums easily, and Dejun is inclined to not believe him. That’s just how it goes. 

“ _Dejun, it’s the door to your right. For now, you’re clear. But get to work before more people realize what’s happening,_ ” Kun tells him, and Dejun’s eyes are immediately looking for the door. While doing so, he sees that Guanheng’s ponytail is now skewed. It looks too endearing to be in this setting, but he appreciates the cleanse from where his eyes have just raked over the blood spewing from the unconscious guards. 

He also notices how Guanheng is pointedly _not_ looking at the ground. 

“Sorry, babe,” Dejun mutters as he takes a step over the mangled hand he had shot, towards where the security room is located. “I know you don’t like the sight of loose blood.”

“It’s chill,” Guanheng brushes off, clearing his throat and sounding very unconvincing. Dejun kisses his cheek as he walks by. 

“Wait,” Xuxi says abruptly, holding an arm out just as Dejun’s hand is an inch away from the doorknob. “Shoot the door.”

“What?” 

“What if there’s someone in there waiting with a gun pointed to your head?” Xuxi asks, raising an eyebrow and then looking towards the door, contemplative. 

“Don’t _say_ shit like that,” Guanheng hisses, the same time that Dejun cocks his gun. “Kun would’ve told you if there was someone in there. There isn’t, right Kun ge?”

“ _Should be clear_ ,” comes Kun’s answer, but it’s not enough to ease the paranoia Xuxi had planted into his head. 

“Cover your ears, Heng,” Dejun mumbles, and Guanheng sighs before following the instructions, palms pressing into his ears only slightly muffling the sound of Dejun’s bullet shooting and hitting the doorknob. 

The door creaks on its hinges after that, having been popped open just slightly. 

“ _I’m gonna say you’ll be safe for three minutes before the guards do their rotation and notice what’s happened. Dejun, can you finish in time?_ ” Kun asks, and it makes Dejun sigh before kicking the door open. Thankfully, and like Kun had predicted, there isn’t anyone waiting inside. 

“Should be doable,” he hums, sliding his gun back into his holster and emptying his hands so that he can handle the safe more easily. 

“I’ll stay at the staircase,” Guanheng lets them know, casting Dejun one last glance, who doesn’t catch it since he’s busy eyeing the locking system on the safe. 

“I’ll guard the door,” Xuxi adds, and the two of them take their position as Dejun starts working. 

It won’t be hard at all—Ten wasn’t lying when he said these bunch weren’t the smartest. It's a simple number combination which won’t be hard to open; Dejun could shoot the lock off if he wanted to. But he knows how to crack it open manually, and he doesn’t want to unnecessarily make Guanheng listen to the sound of his gun going off when they weren’t in the middle of fighting. 

“ _What’s your time on this?_ ” Kun asks out of nowhere, and he sounds just a bit frantic. But it’s still enough to make a droplet of panic settle into Dejun’s heart. Kun was always neutral on missions when he wasn’t scolding them. 

“One; you’re freaking me out. Two; forty seconds, why?” 

Dejun gulps as he hears Kun curse under his breath, and he spares a few seconds to glance at Xuxi, who’s no doubt able to hear this (Kun seems to have switched to their direct channel), and also spares him a glance. 

There’s nothing that passes between them, but Dejun’s fingers start working faster, and he can hear Kun’s typing along his keyboard get louder too. 

“ _You have twenty seconds to get out of that room_ ,” Ten’s sharp voice says, almost jarring with how no-nonsense he sounds. 

“ _You said one minute_ ,” Kun hisses, his statement obviously directed towards Ten, but it’s enough to frustrate Dejun too. It seems like something hadn’t gone according to plan; and that was never a good thing. “ _From which direction?_ ”

“ _Guanheng baby, stay hidden. You too Xuxi, they’ll come from the bottom. Yangyang_ —”

“ _Yeah, I’ll take care of it,_ ” he grunts, and Dejun wills himself to crack the damn safe open faster because he doesn’t _want_ Yangyang to handle all of those people alone down there. 

Like Ten said; they were oafs and they were reckless. Dejun doesn’t want Yangyang in that position. 

The second Dejun manages to get the safe open is the same second Ten sends a resounding, “ _Fuck!_ ” through his ears. 

“ _Heng, a little backup here?_ ” Yangyang yells into their channel, and Dejun forces himself to not pay it any mind as he goes to grab the harddrive and couple files which are sitting in the safe. For a bunch of boneheads who couldn’t have kept these two things confidential and secure, they sure were giving them trouble. 

Guanheng does nothing more than steel his expression as he barrels down the stairs, and since Guanheng is fond of his tranquilizer which doesn’t make any sound when he shoots, Dejun can do nothing but hope he’s taking care of things. 

“ _Dejun, get the fuck out of there,_ ” Kun hisses. “ _You’ll get outnumbered fast_.”

“Xuxi,” Dejun says quickly, pocketing the harddrive and tucking the files under his arm. “I’m done, let’s go.”

“Stick next to me,” Xuxi nods, and then he’s taking a step out of the security room, Dejun close behind him. 

“ _There’ll be two coming up any second, they made it past Yangyang and Guanheng,_ ” Kun says rushedly. The moment the last word leaves his mouth, Dejun can see the approaching figures of the two guards. 

“Take the left, I’ll cover the right,” Dejun lets Xuxi know, and he doesn’t wait for confirmation before pulling the trigger on his gun and landing a shot to one of the guard’s wrists. Taking care of the hands first was always his signature; most people take too long to think about what to do after their hands are rendered useless, and those precious few seconds are usually all Dejun needs to take care of them. 

This one guard seems a bit more feisty than the rest though, seeing as they don’t take as long as others usually do, and comes barreling towards Dejun. 

He’s slammed into the wall behind him at the action, and his gun gets knocked out of his hands. It frustrates Dejun, who growls and then elbows the guard between the shoulders, bringing his knee up at the same time to ram it into his chest. 

His movements weaken the guard long enough for Dejun to throw him off, his hands immediately going to his holster to retrieve his second gun. Dejun realizes the moment he’s pulled his weapon out that he’s grabbed his knife instead, but he guesses it’ll have to do. There is no time to switch it out for his gun, not when the guard comes running towards him once again. 

Easily stepping to the right, Dejun evades the guard’s tackle and rams the knife into the flesh of the man’s thigh as he’s unable to stop his momentum. 

The agonizing cry is loud, but Dejun pays him no mind as he pulls the blade out, just to push the guard down with a kick to his hip. Dejun keeps him pinned on the floor with a foot on the middle of his back, pulling his knife out once more just to plunge it in between the guard’s shoulder blades.

He’s not too sure how deep any of his stab wounds are, but when he pulls his knife out, it’s coated in thick and shiny blood. Upon giving his hands and body a quick once over, Dejun discovers that he’s somewhat covered in blood too. He scrunches his nose in disgust, panting as he looks over his shoulder. 

Dejun expects Xuxi to have already taken down the other one, so he’s a bit taken aback to see that they’re still tussling around. 

Upon closer inspection, Dejun understands why though; this guard is a bit bigger than Xuxi, easily putting up a fight, which is the opposite of what Xuxi is used to. Dejun goes over, now for sure holding his gun, and aims for the guard’s hand cautiously, as to not accidentally shoot Xuxi. 

And he succeeds, but that’s not too surprising. Whenever Sicheng takes him to the shooting range, Dejun is always praised for his accuracy. The guard seems to be more ticked off at Dejun rendering his hand mangled while gushing blood, so much so that he forgets about Xuxi and starts pointing his gun in Dejun’s direction, firing shots haphazardly. 

This was _exactly_ what Ten meant when he had said that they were goons who brandish their guns around without any finesse. It’s messy and _distasteful,_ causing Dejun to duck and hide behind any available object in the security room. 

“ _If you can get out of there in the next five minutes, you’ll escape the other guards,_ ” Sicheng tells them, his voice eerily icy, something Dejun hasn’t heard in a very, _very_ long time. 

“ _Noted_ ,” Guanheng answers to him, and the stableness of his voice puts Dejun a bit at ease; at least it doesn’t seem like he’s hurt. 

“How has this idiot not run out of bullets!” Xuxi yells, quite loud since Dejun is able to hear him over the bullets ricocheting off the walls. He’s reloading his bullets as he asks, movements practiced but still a bit hasty because of the adrenaline of the moment. 

Dejun is going to answer him, but his eyes catch something else which steals all of his attention: another guard running into the security room. 

And Xuxi’s back turned to them. 

Dejun doesn’t think before he’s moving, ducking under the desk in the room and aiming his gun towards the guard from the small crack at the bottom. He can’t see where he’s aiming, but he assumes he’s shot the guard somewhere fatal when the bullets come to an abrupt stop. 

He doesn’t waste any time making sure the guard is knocked down, instead running towards where Xuxi is still unaware of the guard behind him. Dejun would curse at Kun for not warning Xuxi of the guard’s presence if it was at the forefront of his mind. But it’s not; what he’s worried about is the gun the guard has pointing to the back of Xuxi’s head. 

“Xuxi!” Dejun yells, and then, everything is happening very fast, while simultaneously feeling like it’s happening in slow motion. 

Dejun is able to make it to Xuxi before he hears a gun firing, but he doesn’t know _whose_ gun is firing. The force of which Dejun was running sends both Xuxi and him to the ground, Dejun on top of the other.

If it was Xuxi’s bullet which was fired, then he must’ve missed since he fires again. The thump of a body hitting the ground follows, and it’s eerily silent now compared to the chaos which had taken place just seconds prior.

“Dejun…” Xuxi whispers, his hands scrambling, but not touching Dejun, not making any move to get him off of him, and not making any move to move away from under him. “Y-You’re bleeding.”

“It’s not mine,” Dejun assures, assuming Xuxi is talking about all the blood he’s managed to get on him from when he had continuously stabbed that guard. He attempts to push himself up and off of Xuxi after that, but a searing pain rips through his shoulder and his leg before he can move even an inch. “Fuck, what the _fuck_ —”

The adrenaline seems to have escaped him, and now Dejun is fully aware of why Xuxi had said he was bleeding: he _was_ bleeding, because this pain was the type of pain you only felt when—

“Don’t move!” Xuxi says, shimmying out from under Dejun somehow; Dejun isn’t sure how himself. He’s too focused on the blinding pain shooting through his body. _When_ did he even get shot? One of them had to have been when he was tackling Xuxi to the ground, since he didn’t know who had shot the first bullet (however now, it was very clear). He might have not felt the other one with how much adrenaline was coursing through his veins, the pain only catching up to him now since he isn’t moving. 

“ _Why are you telling him not to move? You need to get out of there! Yang and Heng can’t hold them off forever, they need backup. You’re outnumbered, remember?_ ” Ten says into their main channel, but half of it sounds garbled to Dejun, who’s starting to find sucking air into his lungs a painful task. 

“ _Backup would be appreciated right now_!” Yangyang yells, and if Dejun could sprint down the stairs and lodge a knife into the throats of the people who are giving Yangyang and Guanheng a hard time, then he would. But that just doesn’t seem realistic, not with the way he’s writhing in pain, much like the first guard he had taken down tonight. 

“I-I can’t leave Dejun here,” Xuxi gulps. His gentle hands hold onto Dejun’s sides, where he isn’t bleeding from, and starts to turn him onto his side to alleviate pressure from the wound on his thigh; but he couldn’t lay Dejun down on his back. The second wound was on the back of his shoulder. 

Dejun makes a pain sound as Xuxi manoeuvres him, forgetting that everyone can hear him since he’s connected to the main channel. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry Dejun,” Xuxi says with a strangled voice, and Dejun doesn’t even need to be looking at him to know that his eyes are wide and frantic, hands shaking; at a loss of what to do. Afterall, Yangyang was the one who was with Sicheng when he had gotten shot during their last mission, not Xuxi. 

“ _What is it? Why are you saying sorry to Dejun?_ ” Kun worriedly asks, and the stress in his voice is practically palpable. If Dejun stretches his fingers out, he’s sure he’d be able to grab at it. 

“ _What’s wrong with Dejun?_ ” Guanheng asks breathlessly, but the worry isn’t lost in his tone. 

“He got shot,” Xuxi whispers, and it almost sounds like he’s struggling to believe it himself. 

“ _What? Speak up Xuxi, we don’t have all day!_ ”

“He got shot!” Xuxi repeats, louder as he frantically rips the hem of his shirt, tying it around Dejun’s thigh, who moans in pain, but can’t even jerk his leg away from Xuxi; somehow, that’d hurt more. 

Dejun doesn’t hear what anyone says in his earpiece after that, his mind too concentrated on how much his whole body fucking _hurts_. He wants to curse Xuxi out for touching him, but he knows that it’s just to stop the bleeding, and that anyone in their right mind would do the same thing. Afterall, Dejun is the one who isn’t in his right mind, thoughts all consumed solely by how much pain he’s in. 

That is, until a very familiar voice demands his attention. 

“ _He was_ what _?_ ” Guanheng screeches, and not even a second later, Yangyang follows with, “ _Concentrate Heng, 7 o’clock!_ ”

“ _Guanheng, focus_ ,” Sicheng says sternly, and Dejun can imagine him clearly in his head: face steeled but eyes shaking after hearing the current situation. 

“ _Xuxi, come downstairs_ ,” Guanheng says over the line, and it doesn’t sound like a suggestion, but an _order_. 

“I can’t leave him here,” Xuxi says back, and Dejun is suddenly reminded of all those years ago, when they had constantly told each other the same thing. Whether it be on the streets at twelve, or lying in a pool of his own blood at twenty, Dejun guesses Xuxi really can’t leave his side. 

Maybe Xuxi was just obsessed with him… 

“ _And you won’t, I’m coming up there_ ,” Guanheng says, no room for argument in his tone. 

“ _Don’t leave Yangyang alone_ ,” Ten growls, and Dejun is sure that if he was able to see Guanheng now, he’d be rolling his eyes.

“ _Then Xuxi better get the fuck down here_ ,” Guanheng spits back, and it has Dejun chuckling, only to wince halfway through. 

“Go,” he tells Xuxi, who’s looking at him very concernedly. He can’t even begin to imagine what he looks like, laying in his own blood. “He’s gonna throw a hissy fit if you don’t get down there.”

“ _I can hear you_ ,” Guanheng grits out, and it makes Dejun smile again. 

“Then get up here, babe,” he wheezes out, nodding at Xuxi when he looks into his eyes, silently asking if he was sure. 

Xuxi reluctantly gets up, leaving the security room the second Guanheng steps in, looking thoroughly thrown around. His hair has fallen out of the hair tie, and there’s some bruises and cuts on his face. There might be more than that, but Dejun can’t see it well. 

His vision starts to blur a little. 

“Dejun,” Guanheng gasps, sprinting up to him and not minding the bodies around him, or the ever growing pool of blood. 

“Sorry for the mess,” Dejun apologizes, struggling to meet Guanheng’s eyes as he drops to his knees next to him. “I know you don’t like the sight of loose blood.”

“I don’t care about that now!” Guanheng cries, his hands cupping Dejun’s face. They feel warm and wet against Dejun’s cheeks, and he comes to the conclusion that Guanheng has touched his blood. “You need to stay awake for as long as possible.”

“You’re getting blood in my hair,” Dejun complains breathlessly, feeling Guanheng brush his fringe out of his eyes. “It’s going to be a bitch to wash out.”

“That t-truly can’t be what’s bothering you the most right now.” Guanheng glares at him, as he shrugs off his flannel, using the length of it to wrap around Dejun’s shoulder. Whatever retort Dejun had on the tip of his tongue dies when he feels Guanheng pull his shirt in a tight knot, a sharp cry involuntarily escaping his throat anyways. “I-I’m sorry, I’m sorry it hurts, baby, I’m so sorry,” Guanheng says profousely, as if he even had anything to apologize for in the first place. 

Well, maybe just for getting blood into Dejun’s hair. 

“Don’t say sorry,” Dejun grunts, only registering that he’s let tears spill from his eyes when he feels Guanheng swipe them away with his thumbs. “Just make sure you grab that file. D-Don’t forget it here.”

“Dejun, who cares about the file!” the other stresses, pillowing Dejun’s head in his lap when he sees him grimace in pain once again. “I care about _you, only you_.”

“I worked my ass o-off for that file, Huang Guanheng,” Dejun wheezes, ears starting to stuff themselves with cotton. He’s still able to keep his eyes a bit open though, and so he doesn’t tear his gaze away from Guanheng’s face. It was a nice face to look at. “Don’t you dare l-leave that here.”

“Please stop talking,” Guanheng whispers, grabbing the fabric Xuxi had tied around his thigh to tighten it. Dejun makes a sound of distress which Guanheng apologizes for, once again.

“You s-said you loved my voice,” Dejun pouts, or at least he tries to. He’s sure it’s more of a scrunched up, ugly face if anything now. 

“And I do, but you can’t use all of your energy,” he explains comfortingly, as comforting as he can will himself to be as he watches Dejun in this state. 

“ _How’s Dejun holding up?_ ” Kun’s voice asks from his earpiece, and Dejun had honestly forgotten all about it. He notes that Kun does sound less frantic now; probably because Xuxi and Yangyang have dealt with all of the guards. 

But they still need to get out of here before more guards can come up and see the damage they’ve done. 

“Losing a lot of blood,” Guanheng answers, and Dejun makes a noise of agreement he isn’t sure if anyone picks up on. “Is it clear? Can we fucking leave now, _please_?”

“ _You’ll be clear for three minutes,_ ” Sicheng tells them. “ _Yangyang will clear you and go back to the van first, Guanheng will clear the back again just in case—_ ”

“No, n-no I don’t want to leave Dejun here,” Guanheng argues, but it sounds weak, even to Dejun’s cotton stuffed ears. 

“ _You’re not, Xuxi will carry him to the van_ ,” Sicheng says, but it still makes Guanheng shake his head. Dejun is the only one who can see him. 

“Don’t let your emotions i-interfere, babe,” he slurs, one of his hands slowly, almost lazily coming up to where Guanheng’s hands are on his face. 

He grabs onto the back of one of Guanheng’s hands, lacing their fingers together like that and humming, the ghost of a smile on his lips. He doesn’t close his eyes, no matter how much pain is clouding his senses and begging him to call it a night. 

Because Guanheng is still in front of him, and Dejun doesn’t want to look away just yet. 

“On a g-good day, I’m your colleague,” he grins, and then suppresses a whimper at the throbbing pain thumping through his body. “And t-today is a really good d-day.” 

“A good day,” Guanheng repeats, and he looks like he can’t believe the words Dejun had just said. Despite that though, he still nods his head. “It’s a good day because you joined me on a mission.”

“And we k-killed it,” Dejun hums, breath becoming uneven. “Literally and f-figuratively.”

“ _Xuxi is coming up,_ ” Yangyang says to them. “ _Let me know once you leave the room, that’s when I’ll start._ ”

“Clear,” Dejun gasps, shutting his tight momentarily and seeing his vision start spotting black. Another ripple of pain, and another moment of Guanheng combing through his hair to try and distract him.

It doesn’t work at all.

“ _Dejun, please stay quiet,_ ” Ten mutters, and just because it’s Ten, and because he’s borderline begging, Dejun shuts his mouth. 

Xuxi walks in not too soon after, sporting a few new and fresh cuts and bruises. 

“Close your eyes,” Guanheng tells him at the same time that Xuxi manoeuvres an arm under his waist, and the other under his knees. “Go to sleep, baby, I’ll be there when you wake up.”

“P-Promise?” Dejun asks weakly, unable to contain the pained whimper this time when Xuxi adjusts his hold on his body, awakening every nerve of his body and reminding him of the fiery pain. 

“I promise Jun,” Guanheng assures, dropping his hand from Dejun’s face. A few seconds later, Dejun’s hand around his falls limp. 

“ _Stay twenty feet behind them,_ ” Sicheng reminds him just as Xuxi lets Yangyang know they’ve left the security room. 

Guanheng watches until the two of them have disappeared down the stairs. Then, his eyes fall down to where he’s standing, shoes soaked in Dejun’s blood, just like the rest of his clothes and hands. 

His eyes scan over the three unconscious bodies in the security room, and Guanheng’s hand is reaching into his holster for his gun before his brain can catch up to his actions. 

He shoots once, to the body with a stab wound between the shoulder blades. 

He shoots once, the body with a mauled hand. 

He shoots once, to the body closest to Dejun’s pool of blood. 

He’s not too sure which of the three had shot Dejun, but he ignores it in favour of savouring the sick satisfaction that comes with pulling the trigger on people who have hurt Dejun. 

“ _Why’d you shoot? Are there more people coming in_?” Sicheng asks, and Guanheng draws a shaky breath before putting his gun away with equally as shaky hands. The he’s stepping out of the security room, file in hand. 

“No. Clear.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops, sorry for the cliffhanger...  
> [cc](https://curiouscat.qa/DOIEGLAMOUR) & [twt](https://twitter.com/doieglamour?s=21) ♡

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading this chapter!! i hope it helped you understand their dynamics hehe  
> [cc](https://curiouscat.qa/DOIEGLAMOUR) & [twt](https://twitter.com/doieglamour?s=21) ♡


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